Court Clears Way For Rural Planning-Free Migrant Villages
A new ruling in a German city court says the government can build migrant homes anywhere, and some are advocating flooding small countryside communities with migrants.
In Hamburg, where there has been vocal protest over the building of asylum homes, a court has made a landmark ruling. The city went before the Higher Administrative Court (OVG) to seek permission to continue building a migrant camp in the Lemsahl-Mellingstedt district of Hamburg.Citizens of the are had protested the development, which would house 250 migrants, and tried to have it stopped. The court has not only ruled that the development could take place but said that the city could build anywhere as long as the housing was not permanent, reports Zeit Online.
Before the ruling, the government was only allowed to build in industrial areas and away from large residential centres, but now if they build mobile homes they will be able to build anywhere they would like in the city of Hamburg. The other prerequisite for the building permit is that the mobile homes are only to be in the same area for a maximum of three years.
The mobile homes that the ruling discusses are the same that are being created in the German capital of Berlin. The Berlin Senate has unveiled plans for some 30 “migrant villages” that are built from containers like those used to transport goods by sea.
Each container has 13 square meters of space housing two rooms with four bunk beds each. The Berlin government has set aside €70 million for the project which will ultimately house 15,000 migrants, around 500 in each “village.”
Berlin Finance Senator Kollatz-Ahnen argues that the villages are needed so that the gyms the migrants currently live in can be free for their original purpose. He said “the sites are evenly distributed over all districts – 500 people will live in each. The containers are simply equipped, but they offer privacy and security.”
While the majority of migrants are housed in major cities like Hamburg and Berlin, the German Federal government would like to see more of them distributed to the countryside. Federal Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt has said that he wants to discuss the issue with smaller municipalities and thinks that there is a place for migrants even in rural areas with high unemployment.
He argues the schools with dwindling numbers of students in these areas would receive a boost by importing migrants to fill places and says that the countryside will help migrants integrate.
When asked if he thought that the policy might inflame more voters to turn to the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) he said that integration must be handled in a “cautious” manner but said he had no reservations sending migrants into towns that voted heavily for the AfD.
The AfD saw huge election gains in some regions of the country earlier this year campaigning against the mass migration policies of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government.
Country towns have already been subjected to huge waves of migrants over the past year. One town in the Netherlands protested against the fact that the government allocated over 700 migrants to their town of only 100 because of a nearby holiday resort.
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