The UN refugee agency UNHCR is calling on the Austrian states and municipalities to make room for basic facilities. In recent weeks, asylum seekers have had to be housed in tents in a wholly inadequate manner as federal neighborhoods are overcrowded. With tents now being demolished in some communities, newcomers may soon be unable to accommodate at all, according to assessments by the Federal Care Agency.
Regardless of whether someone eventually gets asylum or not, there must be a warm place to sleep for everyone, Christoph Pinter, head of UNHCR Austria, said in a broadcast. Many communities have already taken in people seeking shelter, and about 5,000 more places are currently needed: “If every community would muster the courage and create a few places, the problem would soon be over.”
35,000 people in basic care
Despite the increasing number of asylum applications, the use of basic services is currently only slightly above the level of the previous year – according to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, there are about 35,000 people, excluding Ukrainian refugees, most of whom are housed privately. This is probably mainly due to the fact that a significant number of people applying for asylum move on to other countries and do not occupy a primary care place in Austria, if the high number of applications is put into perspective.
Meanwhile, 250 asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan are housed in a hall of the former Gabor shoe factory in Spittal an der Drau. As Spittal mayor Gerhard Köfer said on Tuesday, the city protested en masse against this move, which he was only informed about late Monday evening. A community survey is planned and they want to “exploit all legal options against it,” Köfer said in an interview with the APA.
Source: Krone
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