Give solidarity a home

Since 2014 the Sleepingplace Orga tries to organise a temporary shelter for homeless, and also illegalised migrants in Berlin.

Not only in the winter months, many people turn to us in search of a place to sleep to finally relax a little and recharge their batteries for a few days. Unfortunately, the requests are always far outweighing the offers and sometimes there is nothing left but to send people to the public shelters, where, as we know, it is almost impossible to sleep, where there is no privacy and people feel unsafe and are thrown out early in the morning and forced to spend a whole day outdoors, sometimes in sub-zero temperatures and only a few heated places, where they can spend only a few hours.

Fortunately, many people coming to us manage to rent rooms for a longer period of time. Either on their own or with our support. A solution that we want for all people who come to us, because we know that without an apartment, at least for a few weeks, it is impossible to take care of their own situation and try to to improve them. It is impossible to start a language course or to look for a job or an apprenticeship.

In the fortunate cases - and there are still too few - where people manage to find a long-term room, we do everything we can to help them pay the rent, which is getting higher and higher in the face of the incredible increase in housing prices and bills:In recent years, we have spent more than 30,000 euros every year to finance rooms and apartments and to ensure that the people who have turned to us are not at risk of losing an apartment for which they have worked so hard.

And this will not change, because the German state forces so many of these people into an absolutely inhuman limbo, in which people with Duldung are prevented from working, caring for themselves and becoming independent. Obviously, the state has no interest in supporting these people, but is only trying to break them physically and mentally by waiting for a favorable opportunity to deport them. We are disgusted by this inhuman logic and want to continue to fight for people to be able to move freely and decide where they want to live, and to live a dignified life wherever they want.

We want them all to have a warm and safe place to live, and in order to continue to make this possible, we need the support of all solidarity people living in Berlin: open your apartments, accommodate a person on your couch or offer a room when your fellow residents are traveling. And if you can't offer a place, donate something so that we can continue to pay the rent and find more and more places. Our solidarity must also be practical, and the opening of borders also means the opening of homes and wallets.