Homeless: 178,000 people lived in shelters at the beginning of the year

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Residential containers as emergency accommodation in Hamburg (in November 2020)

Photo: Daniel Bockwoldt / dpa

The Federal Statistical Office keeps records of many variables, including the turnover of veterinarians or the amount of primroses produced in Germany.

However, the statistics have had a blind spot so far: there was hardly any reliable data nationwide on people without a home of their own.

This gap has now narrowed at least a little: For the first time, the Federal Statistical Office has published figures on homeless people.

According to this, as of January 31 of this year, around 178,000 homeless people were housed in emergency or community accommodation or other temporary overnight accommodation.

This also includes people in assisted living;

Refugees only if their asylum procedure has been successful.

Those who live on the streets are not counted

However, this number does not include people who are staying with friends, acquaintances or family members – nor the homeless who live on the streets without any shelter.

Because the statistics only show a section of homelessness, the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs has also commissioned a representative survey that should also include the groups of people not recorded.

The results are then to be published in a homeless report.

So far, only the Diakonie umbrella organization Ebet had published systematic and comprehensive studies on the situation of homeless people, most recently in March of this year - a detailed presentation of the results can be found here.

According to the statistics, the homeless people accommodated were on average 32 years old;

62 percent were male, 37 percent female, with one percent reporting the gender as unknown.

Among the homeless people already counted, 74,000 were single, a share of 41 percent.

Couples with children accommodated together accounted for almost 59,000 people (33 percent), and another 23,000 people (13 percent) lived as parents or children in a single-parent household during the placement.

Around 4500 people (three percent) lived as a couple in one accommodation.

In a nationwide comparison, according to the statistics, the most homeless people were in Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia, each with just under 36,000 people, followed by Berlin with just under 26,000 people.

The fewest were in Saxony-Anhalt with 365 people, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with 405 people and in Bremen with 790 people.

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