A new catchment option for residents of Weilheim who are homeless or who are threatened with homelessness: The city has rented rooms in the Upper City for such cases - in addition to the emergency accommodation in Töllern.
One deliberately does not want to speak of a “homeless shelter”.
And other uses would also be conceivable at times.
Weilheim
- The new property is two floors at Oberer Stadt 28 - rooms that were actually rented by the city of Weilheim because the urban homeless shelter next to the Töllernkirche has to be extensively renovated.
In view of the immense costs of this renovation (the building is listed, the project is estimated at around 4.8 million euros) and the tight city budget, this project was postponed.
When the city council will tackle it is completely open.
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For the time being, the city has "poorly prepared" the Töllernhaus, says Ordnungsamt head Andreas Wunder, so that the ground floor and first floor can still be used there and the pressure for replacement domiciles is out for now.
There are currently seven people in Töllern, including the caretaker, explains Tobias Stiglmair, who heads the “Office for Social Affairs” in the town hall.
However, a family with children cannot be accepted there, for example - but this is definitely a requirement.
On the waiting list for social housing there are “recently a relatively large number” of families who have been dismissed because of personal needs, according to Stiglmair when asked by the “Tagblatt”.
And social housing cannot always be arranged for them in good time.
Exactly for such cases, the newly rented and newly renovated rooms in the Upper City should be a transition option.
According to Stiglmair, there are three rooms on the ground floor and four rooms on the first floor - which are suitable for families as well as for individuals (then with shared bathroom and kitchen).
In this way, the city of Weilheim “covered everything that can be covered” in terms of emergency accommodation.
Ordnungsamt boss Wunder emphasizes that these rooms can also be used for other purposes, for example they could "temporarily become offices".
But basically the rooms are intended for emergency accommodation of Weilheimers who are homeless or threatened with homelessness, as Mayor Markus Loth confirmed to our newspaper.
It is of course not a classic “homeless shelter”.
A first family may move in in May.
In the city budget for 2021, according to city treasurer Christoph Scharf, around 29,000 euros are estimated for the rented property.
The current figures from Tobias Stiglmair, head of the Social Welfare Office, show how great the need is for such accommodation: 197 applicants are currently on the waiting list for social housing in Weilheim, all of them have a corresponding housing entitlement certificate.
The spectrum ranges from “individuals to households over six people” across all age groups.
"And the tendency is increasing."