Status: 31.08.2023, 19:00 p.m.
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Rentabel's customers are currently only facing closed doors on Monday and Wednesday rest days. What will happen to the employment and qualification operations of the Caritas Center Freising will be decided in the next few months. © Maria Martin
The second-hand department store Rentabel and the Café Etappe, both institutions of Caritas, fear for their future.
Freising/Erding – The second-hand stores and employment companies of Caritas Freising and Erding, "Rentabel" and the café "Genuss in Etappe", offer long-term unemployed and mentally ill people the chance to get a job again and thus a daily structure. Due to a funding gap, the offer may now be threatened with extinction. The Caritas Employment, Integration and Qualification Service (BIQ), which has been trying to improve the living conditions of these people for a long time, is in urgent need of donations.
Offer of help with a long tradition
"It takes time to regain a foothold in the labour market," says Andrea Lachner, head of specialist services. The social pedagogue was there from the very beginning when a number of committed people set up an emergency shelter for the homeless at the Caritas Centre Freising on Kammergasse at the beginning of the 90s. In a house for which a Freising community of heirs had decreed in their will that it should be made available for such purposes.
At that time, the hostel was set up together with welfare recipients and the unemployed, Andrea Lachner remembers the beginnings. The furniture came from household liquidations. "Everyone who helped was enthusiastic," she says. The positive experiences motivated everyone involved. "We noticed how the long-term unemployed flourished when suddenly there was a fixed daily structure for them again."
The space for the furniture from the household liquidations soon became scarce. In a former car dealership with workshop on Moosstraße, the second-hand department store Rentabel was therefore set up. In 2014, the company moved to its current premises on Kepserstraße. For the long-term unemployed employed there (also in the café "Genuss in Etappe"), there is a lump sum from the job center for the integration measure. For people with mental illnesses, the district of Upper Bavaria provides a subsidy per participant. About 20 percent of the costs for these employment measures must be covered by the Caritas Association.
Caritas is running out of costs
And that is becoming increasingly difficult. On the one hand, rent increases had to be managed, including the enormous increase in ancillary costs in recent years. According to Lachner, the BIQ specialist service maintains a fleet of vehicles with which apartment liquidations, furniture collections and disposals have to be carried out. In addition, skilled workers would have to be paid, the so-called work instructors, such as a master tailor in the BIQ project "Nähkisserl". Donated clothes are used to create upcycling products. Entire collections are already available for purchase, says Lachner proudly.
As a social service provider, the company also ensures clean container sites, Freising bathing lakes and playgrounds in the city and district of Freising. "We even pluck weeds in a cemetery in Freising." At the airport, the deposit bottle recycling is being prepared.
There are 19 job opportunities at Rentabel and Etappe in Freising, and 18 at Rentabel in Erding. The BIQ specialist service employs more than 100 clients over the course of the year. Court-ordered community service hours can also be completed there.
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Financing on shaky legs
Because the district of Freising has provided voluntary support of 100,000 euros a year over the past five years, this is how it has always been "handled," says the head of the department. However, the district concept "Work instead of punishment", "Stay with it" and "Accompanied volunteering" (A-B-E) will expire at the end of this year and has been re-applied for. In the case of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, as the sponsor of the Caritas Association, the money could become scarcer in the next few years due to the many people leaving the church, Lachner worries. "Church tax revenues are declining rapidly." It is not possible to finance the BIQ through one's own services. And that's despite the fact that Café Etappe on Vimystraße has created a great program. There is lunch, Tuesdays are "Burger Day", Thursdays are "Pizza Day" and Wednesdays Freising seniors can enjoy a three-course menu for 8.50 euros. "Our chefs create changing weekly menus," emphasizes Lachner. The 54-year-old is convinced that regular work in a protected area is good for people. If you have to pick yourself up, go out of the house instead of lying on the couch, that spurs you on. She hopes that it can continue. Because: "Every person is worth taking care of."
Good to know
"Enjoyment in the stage" is available from Tuesday to Thursday between 9 a.m. and 16 p.m. – breakfast by appointment from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., lunch from 11.30 a.m. to 14.30 p.m. The "Nähkisserl" works can be purchased during opening hours – Vimystraße 3. Rentabel (Kepserstraße 41) is open: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 18 p.m., Fridays from 10 a.m. to 16 p.m. and every second Saturday of the month from 10 a.m. to 14 p.m. Monetary donations to the specialist service can be made to the Bank für Sozialwirtschaft DE57 7002 0500 8850 000 707, reference G707-470760-BIQ.
Maria Martin