englisch (english)

A warm home with keys and your own mailbox is the minimum!
Self-determined single accommodation for all homeless people until end of November!

OTHERWISE WE OCCUPY!!!

For months homeless people have been fighting for dignified housing together with people and initiatives in solidarity. The number of corona infections is rising again and winter is just around the corner. It’s already freezing cold at night and without an apartment you can’t stay at home.
Lord Mayor Onay is making beautiful Sunday speeches and presenting melodious plans – for next year. Meanwhile, the city administration, whose boss Onay is, has closed the last Corona emergency accommodation with single rooms in mid-October and people are once again faced with nothing. At the beginning of the corona pandemic this spring, the city of Hannover rented extra accommodation for the homeless. But even here, at peak times, there was only room for 100 of the total of over 4,000 homeless people in Hannover.

What remains now are the mass accommodations (like at the Old Airport). There is no privacy there. Nor is there a safe place to lock up your last belongings. And there is no place to rest or to cure diseases. Again and again there are conflicts and affected people – especially women – report abuse of power and violence by the security forces. In addition, the doors close every morning at nine and people are back on the street for the day. The dignity of the people sleeping there is permanently trampled on. Many homeless people belong to the corona risk group because of chronic diseases and limited access to medical care. However, distance and hygiene are out of the question given the conditions in the mass accommodations.
The situation in the smaller shelters is not much better either. Privacy is also a scarce commodity here, bullying by employees and security personnel is part of everyday life and corona protection in the many double rooms is insufficient. Some prefer to sleep in tents, cars, or anywhere else outside because of the crappy conditions in the accommodations. But the cold season is just beginning.

In the day clubs, where the rules of distance and hygiene are to be observed, there is only room for less than a quarter of the people who had found a place to warm up, drink coffee and access to toilets and washing facilities before the Corona pandemic.

Time is pressing, but city leaders and the administration are pretending that these problems do not exist. Self-satisfied, they prefer to sit back in the town hall. After the closure of the Corona emergency accommodation in youth hostels and hotels, they don’t even try to find a permanent solution until next year. Who does not deny Corona and the winter sees that a model project next year is not a viable solution.

The general housing shortage and the way the homeless are treated are not a coincidence, but rather the result of market-based housing policy and the city’s complete failure to do anything to counteract this development. While investors and other profiteers of the housing shortage are courted in the city hall, there is nothing but hot air left for all those who have to struggle with the monthly rent, and even more so for those who have already lost their homes.

But this is over now! We, people affected by homelessness and people from social movements and rent struggles, have joined forces to take matters into our own hands. The time of standing in front of the city hall and asking for dignity is over! We no longer see the point of appealing to anyone either. We no longer want to discuss or negotiate. Neither with the housing office, nor with the head of the building department or the mayor. The problems have been named often enough and all points of view have been exchanged.

We hereby set a deadline at the end of November for those responsible in the city of Hannover.