Second German woman evicted from her home to make way for refugees
Second German woman evicted from her home to make way for refugees
Towns and cities across Germany are struggling to find accommodation for the tens of thousands of refugees streaming into the country
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...r_3458933b.jpgGabrielle Keller with her letter Photo: DPA
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By Justin Huggler, Berlin
5:51PM BST 30 Sep 2015
A woman in Germany is being evicted from her home of 23 years to make way for asylum-seekers, in the second such case to emerge.
Gabrielle Keller has been given until the end of the year to leave her flat in the small southern town of Eschbach, near the border with France.
The flat belongs to the local municipality, which says it is needed to house refugees.
“I think it’s a scandal to throw tenants out of their apartments,” the 56-year-old Ms Keller told SWR television. “I can’t see the sense of it.”
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http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...__3453346b.jpgMigrants sleep on camp beds by the running track at the August Schaerttner Halle in Hanau, Germany
Towns and cities across Germany are struggling to find accommodation for the tens of thousands of refugees streaming into the country.
Ms Keller’s case follows that of Bettina Halbey, a nurse who is being evicted from her home of 16 years in the town of Nieheim, hundreds of miles to the north.
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Mario Schlafke, the mayor of Eschbach, says the town had no choice but to ask Ms Keller to leave.
“The council hasn’t taken a frivolous decision,” he told Welt newspaper. “The alternative would have been to set up beds in the gym.”
The town of just 2,400 people is under pressure to find space for refugees, and Ms Keller’s flat is one of only two owned by the local municipality. It is not social housing and Ms Keller is a rent-paying tenant.
A shipping container has already been set up as temporary accommodation on a local football field, while a family of eight are being accommodated in a youth centre.
“Our backs are to the wall,” Claudia Geiselbrecht, a local councillor, told Badische Zeitung, a local newspaper.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...__3453348b.jpgMigrants sleep at an improvised temporary shelter in a sports hall in Hanau, Germany
The municipality says it has offered to help Ms Keller find new accommodation, a claim she denies. She has hired a lawyer and vowed to fight the eviction.
The news came as a new poll showed the stark divide in pulic opinion over Angela Merkel’s refugee policy between the former East Germany and the rest of the country.
Only 24 per cent of those polled in the former East named Mrs Merkel as the politician they trust most, down from 32 per cent just a month ago, the survey for the Insa Institute found.
But in the former West, 33 per cent named Mrs Merkel – up from 31 per cent in August.
The West’s larger population means that nationally support for the Chancellor remains strong.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-refugees.html
