German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/74, p. 8825.
Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.
The situation in the cities and communities in Germany is catastrophic: Ever more budget freezes, ever less money for the the most necessary obligatory duties. Swimming pools, gymnasiums, day-cares and entire school buildings cannot be renovated. Streets, walkways, landscaping, the entire public space and infrastructure increasingly decays.
The present deficit of the local governments amounts to 60 billion euros and will climb by 2028 to over 100 billion euros. The principal origin of this disaster is, according to the central association of the local governments, the explosion of the sozial costs.
In this dramatic situation, the housing emergency ever further intensifies. Many people no longer find affordable housing. Young people cannot start new families; young families need to remain in their much too small dwellings. In big cities, often hundreds of those seeking housing stand in waiting lines. Despite this, you ever further intensify the housing crisis.
For normal people, there is no more housing, certainly not for the low-income whom you ostensibly have at heart. You prolong the rent price brake, and empower your colleagues in the States to designate vast areas with strained housing markets. You thereby confirm that in Germany a vast housing emergency prevails.
And even though you quite precisely know this, you nevertheless continue to carry out large, forced allocations of refugees in areas with a housing emergency and thereby quite knowingly intensify the domestic population’s housing emergency ever further. What you are doing, namely playing off the domestic population against the refugees,
Clara Bünger (Linke): That, you do!
Caren Lay
(Linke): That, you do!
is nothing other than asozial. Before I let anyone in, I need to first examine whether I have room enough,
Ina Latendorf
(Linke): You’ve never had a relation to the constitution!
and whether in fact sufficient room is at hand, the local people know know best of all. There thus needs be in the future a veto right of the communities against such forced allocations when already there prevails a housing emergency, dear friends.
Ina Latendorf
(Linke): You well know that the numbers have receded, ne?
Since it makes no sense to let in ever more people somewhere where thousands of families no more find housing. That is asozial.
Clara
Bünger (Linke): There are local governments which voluntarily accept!
Your forced allocations of refugees throw communities, already on the brink of bankruptcy, completely into financial ruin, and thereby into inability to act. Two-thirds, in many Federal States even three-quarters, of Bürgergeld recipients have a migration background.
Housing for the Bürgergeld recipients alone costs the communities every year 11 billion euros out of their own pocket. In Berlin, just the sheltering of refugees costs 1 billion euros – money which is lacking for the most important problems: Renovation of schools and day-care, repair of streets, bridges and city clinics.
The social costs of the local governments since 2015 have climbed from 54 billion euros to over 85 billion euros. The exploding social costs in the cities and communities becomes clear to everyone: One can have a sozial state. One can also have open borders. But both together leads unavoidably to the collapse of the sozial system.
We experience precisely that directly in Germany. Who overburdens the local governments, endangers the social peace. Recover consciousness, and finally pull the emergency brake!
[trans: tem]
