What it’s like to be homeless during Germany’s winter

Kurt doesn’t have a home, though that doesn’t stop him smiling as he offers his homeless journal to Christmas crowds in a centre of Mainz in Rhineland-Palatinate.

“I’m happy that a authorities don’t mind me putting adult my tent underneath a overpass in a evening,” he says, when asked where he sleeps.

The 44-year-old is one of around 335,000 homeless people who live in Germany. While many are offering beds in hostels, an opposite series nap on a streets. In a winter their conditions becomes quite precarious.

Many of them are already weak, says Werena Rosenke from a Federal Organization for Helping a Homeless (BAG). If they get ill there is a genuine risk they could die of hypothermia, even in a milder winter.

Since 1991 a BAG estimates that during slightest 289 homeless people have solidified to death. Last year there were 3 deaths by hypothermia, one in Berlin, one in Saxony and one in Baden-Württemberg.

“I’m fearful of a winter,” says 31-year-old Ioannis from Romania, who is vagrant in a walking section in Mainz. “I’m on a travel any day, and any night we nap opposite a residence wall.”

Ioannis collects between €15 and €20 a day, usually adequate to survive.

“The state doesn’t help, a churches don’t help,” he complains.

People from Romania have no right to state welfare, explains Beate Jagusch from Caritas, a Catholic Church’s charity.

“Nobody has shortcoming for them. It’s comfortless that we can’t offer them anything some-more than a crater of prohibited tea and a place to comfortable up.”

This winter a Protestant Church in Mainz has erected containers to residence homeless people. But on a initial day, 15 people were sent divided as there was usually sleeping room for 24 people.

Local authorities also have a shortcoming to safeguard that homeless people have a place to sleep.

“That is generally loyal in a cold months when when internal authorities have to offer suitable housing so that people don’t solidify to death,” pronounced a orator for a amicable affairs method in Rhineland-Palatinate.

Roughly any third homeless chairman in Mainz comes from eastern Europe, says Klaus Merten, a executive of a Catholic Church’s assistance classification there. Many of them once worked in tillage though had to stop work given of illness. Others were cheated out of their salary though won’t go home out of shame.

It is a identical story via a country. The BAG estimates that 50 to 60 percent of homeless people in vital German cities are from other EU countries.

“Every story is different,” says Merten. “They are really particular stories for because people have depressed out of their lives.”

One chairman he knew once ran a large company, though after his mother died he gave adult his home and changed to a streets.

Another story is that of Angelika, who worked as a dental partner for 20 years. But when she gave adult her pursuit due to her basin and stopped receiving income from her insurer, she became homeless.

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Now 49, she has a one-room unit again interjection to a pension, though still begs on a travel during a day.

“When I’ve paid for all with my pension, we have €250 left any month – that’s simply not enough,” she says.

Kurt says he prefers offered a journal to begging. For any one he sells he earns 75 cents.

“I had no thought it would be this tough to get behind on my feet,” a 44-year-old admits.

Kurt has been vital on a travel for a year given he suffered burnout and mislaid his job. In 2017 he says he will “look for a tiny unit so that we can get behind into normal life again.”

“I know we can’t give adult on myself, differently I’ve lost.”