Nurse faces eviction for refugees
Apartment building to become shelter for asylum seekers
BERLIN — A woman in Germany is being evicted from her home of 16 years to make way for asylum seekers, amid growing concerns over how Germany will find accommodation for the hundreds of thousands of refugees reaching the country.
Bettina Halbey, a 51-year-old nurse, has lived alone in her apartment in the small western German town of Nieheim since her children grew up.
On Sept 1, she received a letter from her landlord, the local municipality, telling her the building was being turned into a refugee shelter and she had until next May to leave.
“I was completely taken aback,” Halbey told Die Welt newspaper. “I find it impossible to describe how the city has treated me.”
When Halbey vented her frustration on Facebook, asking why she was being evicted when properties were standing empty in the town, her comments were shared 200,000 times.
In Germany, where 52 per cent of the population rent their homes, it is almost unheard of to be asked to leave under such circumstances.
Tenants are strongly protected by law, and can normally be evicted only if they have broken the terms of their rental agreement.
“I’ve muddled through sorrow and distress, and then I get this notice,” said Halbey, who brought up her two children as a single mother in the apartment. “It was like a kick in the teeth.”
Halbey insisted she was not against Germany taking refugees in. When asylum seekers moved into the apartment above hers last May, they got on well, she said. “We take care of each other. Helping people, this is my commandment,” she said.
Although the building belongs to the local municipality, it is not social housing and Halbey pays the full market rent. But Rainer Vidal, the mayor of Nieheim, said the building was needed to house refugees because the town’s existing three shelters were full.
“A new residential unit for 30 refugees in Nieheim would cost €30,000 (about $45,000). This solution will cost me nothing,” he told Welt.
Doubts have been raised over whether the municipality’s decision is legal.
It has invoked a law under which a private landlord can evict a tenant if he wants to move into the property himself.
“Normally, only a natural person can terminate for personal use. A municipality cannot move into (an apartment) as a legal entity, so the process is legally highly questionable,” Ulrich Ropertz, a spokesman of the German Tenants’ Federation, said.
The controversy has come amid growing concern in Germany over how to house refugees, with shelters already full across the country and tens of thousands continuing to arrive.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government agreed on Thursday to release a further €2 billion ($2.98 billion) to help pay the costs of sheltering refugees, a quarter of which is earmarked for building new accommodation.