New accommodation concepts – old problems: – Eberswalde: Schwarzer Weg

Deutsch hier: Neue Unterbringungskonzepte – alte Probleme: Eberswalde, Schwarzer Weg

In Brandenburg, there are many new concepts of accommodation for refugees. For example, old Lagers in isolated areas are being opened; the state is allowing the building of container lagers in industrial areas, apartment blocks as accommodation alternatives are being turned into lagers, where five to six women refugees are being housed in a small flat with three rooms.

What the new accommodation concepts of a small flat being shared by 5-6 women means to refugee women:

When the women are transferred from the central receiving centre in Eisenhüttenstadt to these apartment lagers, they are very happy. They feel advantaged to their colleagues who are transferred to Heims, where they have to share facilities with many other refugees, only to then realise they are sharing the same fate.

When you enter the house, a sign reads in German and English “Welcome, strange friends”

After talking to women in Ebarswalde, Schwarzer Weg, where we have one of these new styles of accommodation, we found out that the conflicts have turned into physical fights between the women. They feel squeezed together and in a short while conflicts of who is taking longer in the bathroom or the one who want to use the kitchen to make their meal is a daily occurrence. Some women are afraid that these conflicts will escalate to catastrophes.

One of the rooms we visited is having fungi and cockroaches, the women in it do not even know where to complain. Communication is a problem because noboby in the district ever provides a translation in their language to them.

We are saying again and again: Give women and children a choice of living in their own private flats and abolish all Lagers. In Dresden the situation of asylum seekers being squeezed together in a small flat escaleted into a physical fight with a fatal end. Do not wait for catastrophes to happen like that before you realise what the Lagers are doing to asylum seekers.

We will continue to fight together for decent living conditions for refugee women.