Hanover (dpa / lni) – Many municipalities in Lower Saxony are still desperately looking for housing for refugees. There is a need for suitable apartments across the country, said the Association of Towns and Municipalities in Hanover on request. The housing market offers little space for refugees, especially in urban centers and popular vacation spots, where living space is scarce anyway. According to local authorities, accommodation is not only needed for refugees from Ukraine, but also for asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan, for example.
“Even before the start of the war in Ukraine, the greatest challenge in the context of refugee accommodation was the scarce living space – both in urban areas and in the countryside,” said Marco Trips, President of the Association of Towns and Municipalities. This is particularly due to the tense housing market and rents. “The influx of many displaced persons from Ukraine is likely to have exacerbated the situation, although in many places there is a great willingness to provide support from private and institutional sources,” said Trips.
The district of Oldenburg, for example, reported this week that its emergency shelters in Hude and Wildeshausen, which serve as a buffer before further distribution to apartments and houses, were increasingly occupied. “If the state of Lower Saxony continues to consistently allocate asylum seekers, finding appropriate housing is becoming increasingly difficult,” the district said. The district therefore asked apartment owners again to offer “any available living space”.
The cities of Emden, Lingen, Nordhorn and Osnabrück, as well as the districts of Leer and Ammerland, have made similar calls to their populations in recent weeks. At the beginning of July, the district administration in Leer rented an empty hotel in the municipality of Moormerland as further initial accommodation. Because not all refugees can be provided with a suitable apartment within a short time, the district said. The search for suitable accommodation is becoming more difficult.
By the beginning of July, around 87,000 Ukraine refugees had been registered by authorities in Lower Saxony, according to the Interior Ministry in Hanover, with reference to data from the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. That’s almost 20,000 more than in mid-May. The ministry cannot say how many of the people registered in Lower Saxony will remain in the state. Many refugees are registered at a so-called turnstile at the Laatzen exhibition center near Hanover, but then travel on.
Compared to mid-May, the number of independent cities and districts that are exempt from taking in Ukrainian refugees due to excessive burdens has risen from 13 to 17. These currently include the cities of Oldenburg, Osnabrück, Braunschweig, Wolfsburg, Göttingen and the state capital of Hanover, as well as the districts of Northeim, Osnabrück, Heidekreis, Holzminden, Cloppenburg, Lüchow-Dannenberg, Celle, Göttingen, Goslar, Vechta and Hameln-Pyrmont.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220717-99-52151/2
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