Protect Human Lives! Dissolve Mass Accommodation!
Flats Instead Of Lagers!
Shared Press Release by
We’ll Come United Berlin und Brandenburg
Flüchtlingsrat Berlin e.V.
AK Wohnungsnot
Unter Druck e.V.
Women in Exile e.V.
Selbstvertretung wohnungsloser Menschen /
Wohnungslosentreffen
Wohnungslosenparlament
Bündnis solidarische Stadt
Armutsnetzwerk e.V.
Berlin, 7. April 2020
While contact is restricted by numerous measures for protection against the Corona Virus, tens of thousands of people in Berlin live in shelters for refugees and homeless people, cramped together in multi-bed rooms and shared facilities like bathrooms and kitchens. At least 30,000 homeless have been placed in precarious accommodation, often without any social care or quality standards, by the district offices according to the ASOG, and a further 20,0002 live in collective accommodation run by the State Office for Refugee Affairs (LAF) with up to 500 residents per shelter. In this situation, it is impossible to comply with contact and distance prohibitions. In addition, there are several thousand homeless people living on the streets, who are hardly able to protect themselves from the virus. On the other hand, almost all 150,000 beds in the 800 hotels and accommodation facilities in Berlin are currently empty, and there are also numerous holiday apartments and furnished “business apartments” that are usually rented on a monthly basis.
We demand the immediate housing of all homeless people in flats and holiday or business apartments and the dissolution of mass accommodation where protection against infection is not possible.
Our demands:
Safe and decent living instead of homelessness and collective accommodation – immediate measures
Homeless people always belong to the so-called risk groups due to the living conditions on the streets, their situation has been considerably aggravated by the corona pandemic: Berlin emergency overnight shelters were closed or the number of beds reduced. Day care facilities for the homeless closed, too. The supply of food is partly shifted to the streets, the existing supply structure is crumbling. For people on the street, this is an enormous physical and psychological burden.The 350 places recently created at two locations in Berlin for homeless people are far from sufficient for the 2000 people who were recently counted in Berlin living visibly on the streets. The corona virus can spread quickly in the emergency shelters of the “Kältehilfe” – they are a danger to those affected and everyone else.
