Austria: 5,000 asylum seekers risk homelessness

BY|infomigrants

Austria has still not found a solution to a lack of accommodation for thousands of asylum seekers, after negotiations between the federal and state governments on Wednesday failed to reach an agreement.

Around 5,000 people – mostly men from Syria and Afghanistan – may be facing the prospect of sleeping on the streets in Austria as the country’s state governors argue with the federal interior minister, Gerhard Karner, about who is responsible for accommodating them. The problem has arisen mainly because the space normally offered to asylum seekers is currently being filled by refugees from the war in Ukraine.

In an effort to address the issue, the government recently had tents set up, only to face a barrage of opposition from local communities and state and city leaders. Some of the tents have subsequently been taken down – on Wednesday 100 men who had been housed in tents in St. Georgen im Attergau, northeast of Salzburg, were forced to leave after a decision by the mayor, and moved to accommodation elsewhere in the state.

UNHCR warning

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNCHR) warned this week that the situation needed to be resolved before people were left without any accommodation at all.

“The dispute (…) must not lead to homelessness among asylum seekers,” wrote Christoph Pinter, head of UNHCR Austria, in a tweet. “If every community takes heart and creates a few places, the problem would quickly be over.”

Pinter says the large number of people applying for asylum is undoubtedly a challenge, but he warned, “it would be an indictment for Austria if people, many of whom had to flee from war and terror, ended up on the streets.”

In overcrowded asylum seeker facilities meanwhile, conditions are worsening. Andreas Babler, the mayor of Traiskirchen — a small town near Vienna — complained Wednesday that the situation in their local reception center was “intolerable,” with “long queues at the food counter outside when it is wet and cold, crowds of people … crammed into rooms, and bleak conditions for small children,” Austria’s Der Standard newspaper reports. 

More asylum applications

Between January and September almost 72,000 people applied for asylum in Austria, up from 40,000 over the whole of last year. However, many of those arriving in recent months have travelled on to other countries and needed only temporary accommodation in Austria.

A number of Austrian municipalities have taken in asylum seekers, but for about 5,000 people, places have not yet been found, according to the Austrian interior ministry and UNHCR.

The states have thusfar rejected the federal interior ministers’ requests to accommodate them, arguing that they have not been sufficiently involved the planning. The leader of Carinthia state, Peter Kaiser, said this week that people were feeling the weight of the pandemic and the pressure of inflation. Unless the government consults the states about where asylum seekers are to be accommodated, he warned, it risks fuelling populism. “The people’s humanity is being tested.”