In the small border town of Laufen, the topic came across very directly a few years ago – in the form of those many people who set out for Europe in 2015 and now came into the country via Austria. The gymnasium of the high school was full of camp beds and the government of Upper Bavaria made plans for communal accommodation on state property next to the nature conservation academy. But the 7,300 people from Laufen accommodated their 80 or so refugees in individual apartments and houses, because they were of the opinion even then that integration would work better this way. And in the end it worked quite noiselessly, even when running.
There, the topic is pushing itself back to the fore because the government has now pulled its plans for the communal accommodation out of the drawer. Too many leases for other accommodations have expired, not all of them can be extended, you need spaces and prefer to create them yourself, according to the government. So now the central communal accommodation will probably come. And otherwise, large refugee shelters are again coming into focus: The Ampel partners in Berlin have decided to move away from the so-called anchor centers.
The decisive sentence in the coalition agreement is anything but concrete: “The concept of anchor centers will not be pursued by the federal government,” it says on page 140. But they have it in the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, in the large administrative houses and in the municipalities Sentence very well taken note of.
Bamberg wants to create urgently required living space there
In Bamberg, for example, Mayor Andreas Starke (SPD) is not even hiding his euphoria: “With joy and great approval,” he said, he made the decision. The city has long had its eye on the local “anchor center”, a huge area designed for around 1,500 refugees. When the lease expires by the end of 2025 at the latest – the Free State is currently operating the center – the end of mass accommodation in Upper Franconia could be sealed. Then the city wants to acquire the vacant residential buildings and create urgently needed living space. And what’s more: Bamberg is planning a completely new district there.
There is also speculation in the Lower Franconian town of Geldersheim near Schweinfurt, where another of the seven Bavarian “anchor centers” is located. Here, too, the lease expires in 2025, the chip manufacturer Intel has expressed interest in the site, and the surrounding municipalities would like an industrial area. The sentence in the coalition agreement could fuel these plans.
The chip manufacturer Intel has expressed interest in the former US barracks in Geldersheim near Schweinfurt. Refugees are still housed there.
(Photo: Clara Lipkowski)
But where would the refugees be housed? Extensive immigration to the Free State can also be expected in the following years. The last time the number rose again in November, to 2032 new immigrants (October: 1776).
The city of Bamberg announced on Wednesday that it wanted to continue to provide some of the residential buildings to refugees, but also to accommodate them decentrally in the city area. The Bavarian Refugee Council, however, is not as euphoric as the city of Bamberg. The coalition’s decision was “disappointing” and the centers would not be abolished in any way, the organization announced at the end of November. It only ends the attempt by the now former Federal Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, to establish the centers nationwide. In fact, the project does not have to result in a complete closure of the centers. A core task of the centers is the initial reception of asylum seekers. That must continue to be guaranteed. So would the centers just continue to exist under a different name?
The centers are being criticized because some refugees stay there for a long time – and in camp-like conditions. As long as the duration “is not reduced from six months to two years to a few weeks, nothing will change for the refugees housed there,” says the Refugee Council.
The real estate that becomes available is also in demand in Upper Bavaria
The interior ministry in Munich would have to initiate the decisive steps towards the end of the “anchor centers” – based on the asylum law at the federal level. On Wednesday, a ministry spokeswoman only announced which steps the new government was planning, “is neither set out in the coalition agreement, nor are we aware of any additional explanations”.
Meanwhile, even in Upper Bavaria, at least some cities know what to do with real estate that is becoming vacant. The main “anchor center” of the district is in the former Max Immelmann barracks in Manching near Ingolstadt. There are branch offices in Fürstenfeldbruck, in a former US barracks in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and in a former training center in Waldkraiburg, where there were riots and a major police operation in 2018. A total of 2163 people are currently housed in these “anchor” facilities, and a further 6449 in communal accommodation – from 25 360 refugees in the entire Upper Bavaria district who are housed publicly.
According to Mayor Hans Feil (CSU), the police only had to intervene in Laufen once since 2015. An asylum seeker had received a rejection letter and left his frustration on the furniture in his room. Feil hopes that the now planned larger communal accommodation will not create problems after all, as some people from the neighboring housing estate fear. He negotiated with the government not necessarily to put 80 people there for ten years, but just as well 60 people for 15 years. Then, according to Feil’s expectation, the government will also have to redesign the building – ideally in such a way that the city can, for example, create social housing in it after these 15 years. In any case, the city council approved this and the desire for professional care and as many families as possible among the residents on Wednesday evening with a large majority.