Increasing numbers of refugees: district office has to resort to the school gym again

Created: 01/12/2022, 08:00

By: Manuel Eser

A school gym is no longer possible: (from right) District Administrator Helmut Petz, Sandra Schulenberg, Head of Asylum and Refugee Management, and Isabel Altmeyer, Head of Social Affairs, take care of the accommodation of newly arrived refugees.

© Lehmann

The district of Freising once again needs a school gymnasium for the initial accommodation of refugees.

This time it hits a school in Freising.

Freising

– The rapidly increasing number of people seeking help arriving in the district of Freising makes it necessary: ​​the district must once again convert a school gymnasium into an initial reception facility.

After schools in Moosburg and Eching were already affected by similar measures, this time the Gute Änger secondary school in Freising is affected.

"It was clear to me that we would only take this step again if there was no other way," emphasized District Administrator Helmut Petz at a press conference on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, we have now reached this point.

"We cannot leave people on the street who are starving and in cardigans arriving on our buses."

Buses come every 14 days - not only with Ukrainians

As Sandra Schulenberg, head of the asylum and refugee management department in the district office, announced, the government of Upper Bavaria is currently allocating around 25 people from Ukraine to the Freising district every 14 days.

"These people all find temporary accommodation in the initial reception center for people seeking protection from Ukraine in Nandlstadt," explained Schulenberg.

"From there, they are distributed to newly built or vacant refugee accommodation, depending on availability."

In addition, the authorities have to increasingly deal with cases of family reunification and with Ukrainians who have been housed privately for a long time but now have to or want to leave this place.

And last but not least, the government is again referring more and more asylum seekers from other countries.

In November alone, the district had to take in 80 people seeking help who were not from Ukraine.

The district administrator would have preferred to use a municipal hall for a different purpose

In order to cope with the increasing number of refugees, the district office has created more than 100 new accommodation places since October.

"Every week we look at five real estate properties," reported Schulenberg.

Only not all are suitable as accommodation.

Nevertheless, another 45 new places will be created by mid-December.

Alone, it's not enough.

"As the last district in Upper Bavaria, we now have to resort to a school gym."

This was preceded on Tuesday by a meeting between the district administrator and the headmasters of the Freising district and the mayors.

"I would have preferred that we could have used a communal hall," Petz said.

For example the Luitpoldhalle in Freising or one of the hop halls in the Hallertau.

But they are all fully booked, especially now after a long corona pandemic.

The affected students can go ice skating or swimming for free

Not all school gyms were available either, because some are not only needed for physical education, Petz said.

They didn't want to use the school gyms in Eching and Moosburg again - "for the sake of fairness".

And so the choice fell on the secondary school Gute Änger.

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The conversion of the gymnasium into an initial reception facility will take place in the week from December 12th to 18th.

There will be room for around 100 beds.

The high school students, who now have to do without their hall, are also being considered, as Petz reported: "The headmistress had the charming idea of ​​taking the students ice skating or swimming in the pre-Christmas period - at state expense, of course.

(By the way: everything from the region is now also available in our regular Freising newsletter.)

Petz was not yet able to estimate how long the hall would be needed for refugees.

You have to reckon with a few weeks.

The district office has “great hope” that in spring 2023 it will “look good”, as Schulenberg puts it.

Hopes are pinned on by private investors who have agreed to build refugee accommodation – on district land and on their own land.