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No apartment of your own: In the Offenbach district, too, more and more people are having to move out of their four walls. Obertshausen, Heusenstamm and Mühlheim are therefore examining cooperation in working with the homeless. Symbol © dpa
The municipalities of Obertshausen, Mühlheim and Heusenstamm are fighting homelessness and are currently examining the possibility of inter-municipal cooperation.
Heusenstamm/Obertshausen/Mühlheim – When a metropolitan region like the Rhine-Main area keeps growing, the competition for living space intensifies. One of the consequences: “There are more and more terminations for personal use,” says Michael Möser (CDU), First City Councilor of Obertshausen. This means that tenants have to move out because the owners want to use the living space. Only: Many people do not immediately find a new apartment, there is a risk of homelessness. Möser emphasizes that this fate is befalling more and more citizens in the Offenbach district. The number of evictions is also increasing. “The situation has been getting worse for a good ten years.”
According to Möser, there are 200 communities of need in Obertshausen that have applied for housing. Not everyone is at risk of homelessness, many have been fired for their own needs. Nevertheless: the cities are increasingly challenged, it’s not just about finding new places to stay for the homeless, but also making sure that people don’t get into this situation in the first place.
To this end, Obertshausen, Mühlheim and Heusenstamm want to join forces to form an inter-municipal cooperation (IKZ). The aim of these alliances is to bundle municipal tasks of any kind (from waste water to vehicle registration) in order to save costs and achieve synergy effects. In all three municipalities, the city councilors have already voted unanimously to give the respective magistrate the task of exploring all aspects of the project.
The first step is now to examine the requirements for formal cooperation and to develop a suitable concept, reveals Mühlheim Mayor Alexander Krey (Alliance for Mühlheim). “We would like to not only organize the project – if it is decided – in a loose association, but also give it a fixed structure.” The Christian Democrat hopes, with the concentrated power of three municipalities behind him, the offer of help for people without a roof to be able to expand the head further in the future.
Because the reasons why a person can slip into homelessness are extremely diverse, treatment and advice are correspondingly complex. “Of course there are the classic cases of people being evicted because of debt, but we also have people who are addicted to drugs or are struggling with mental health problems,” explains Krey. “Basically, we need an expert for each area, which we cannot do on our own.”
A possible IKZ could help. “The bottom line is that we are broader in terms of performance and quality and can help people better – because for many we are the last resort,” the Mühlheim town hall chief points out.
That’s what an IKZ is all about
The IKZ are a Hessian specialty and were brought into being in 2004 by the state government. “But things really got going in 2008, and three years later the funds were increased considerably,” says Claus Spandau, the state’s IKZ representative. To date, EUR 33 million in funding has been awarded for around 500 projects involving more than 2,000 municipalities. “2022 was our record year with 45 applications,” says Spandau. By the end of June 2023, 25 projects had already been approved. There is a one-time payment of EUR 25,000 per municipality, but a maximum of EUR 100,000 per IKZ. “We only pay out 150,000 euros if a district and the majority of its municipalities are involved,” explains Spandau. The money is paid out by the responsible regional council in Kassel, Gießen or Darmstadt. For the full funding amount, an IKZ must have existed for at least five years.
Six homeless people are currently quartered in appropriate emergency accommodation in Mühlenstadt. In 2022, the annual average was around 18 homeless, as Olaf Burmeister-Salg from the Youth and Social Affairs department reports. “We have two accommodations, one of which is closed for renovation work, but at the moment we can easily accommodate all those affected.”
In Heusenstamm, on the other hand, the accommodation does not seem satisfactory, the building intended for this purpose is in a “deplorable condition”, says Mayor Steffen Ball (CDU). About ten to twelve people currently live there. In addition, those affected would have to be admitted to hotels again and again. In principle, one also wants to examine how the people can be looked after better in order to get them out of homelessness. First City Councilor Uwe Michael Hajdu (CDU) adds that the number of people affected varies, and in Heusenstamm too forced evictions are the most common reason for such accommodations.
There are currently two homeless shelters in Obertshausen, in which 36 people live as of October 2022. According to City Council Möser, a third accommodation is not planned for the time being. Whether it stays that way is also a result of the IKZ. How this can be achieved must be decided after the summer break. “By the end of the year we want to know whether we are going down this path,” says Möser. (Steffen Gerth, Claudia Bechthold, Jan Lucas Frenger)
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