German city to house Ukrainian refugees in ‘Z’ trailers – Bild
The northern German city of Hamburg is planning to offer asylum seekers, including Ukrainians, "tiny" trailer houses as accommodation, Germany’s Bild tabloid reported on Saturday. Hamburg is facing an acute refugee housing shortage as tens of thousands in need of protection already lack accommodation, and around 100 new arrivals come each day, according to the newspaper.
The trailer homes touted as a potential solution to the crisis are just six meters long and 2.5 meters wide and are designed to house between four and six people, according to Bild. So far, the city has rented a total of 50 such "tiny homes" as part of a test project.
A photo published by Bild, which purports to depict one of the rented trailer homes, shows the accommodation container covered in carmine ‘Z’ letters. Although apparently used to mark the containers as suitable for overnight stays, ‘Z’ letters also bear resemblance to an unofficial symbol used by the Russian forces during Moscow’s ongoing campaign in Ukraine.
The project has already received approval from the city’s social policies minister, Melanie Leonhard, who found a refugee camp she had visited "appropriate," while Bild described them as "tight but well thought out" and compared them to "camping" trailers.
It is unclear what would-be residents of the trailer homes think about the initiative. According to Bild, more than 50,000 asylum seekers, including Syrians, Afghans, and some 20,000 Ukrainians, are currently seeking accommodation in the city.
The city authorities now intend to place the trailer homes in areas where there is currently no accommodation for asylum seekers. Germany reportedly is having a hard time accommodating all the refugees that arrived there amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In early October, 23 municipal leaders across the country warned that local authorities had exhausted all resources to aid new arrivals. The municipalities "have their backs against the wall," a seven-page open letter penned at the time by the municipal heads claimed.
