The Skinheads of Europe Don't Like Refugees. Neither Do the Doctors and Lawyers.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-17/the-skinheads-of-europe-don-t-like-refugees-neither-do-the-doctors-and-lawyers.html

The diplomats, lawyers and celebrities living on the priciest street in Germany’s wealthiest city aren’t thrilled about their new neighbors.

Refugees fleeing war zones are moving into the empty office building around the corner from their lakefront road, Harvestehuder Weg, in Hamburg. The four-story building being transformed by borough Mayor Torsten Sevecke sits on a leafy plot abutting a luxury development where apartments cost as much as 7 million euros ($9 million). Locals are suing the city because they’re worried their properties will lose value.

“Where will these people buy their groceries? The cheaper supermarkets are far away,” said Barbara, a 70-year-old pensioner who lives in the area but spends most of the year in Spain. She asked that her last name not be published because it would be “embarrassing.” “I’d prefer if the government invests the money in a new building somewhere else.”

Record numbers of refugees are arriving in Europe, roiling regional politics and leaving local officials struggling to provide shelter while managing their constituents’ unhappiness. Most displaced people head to Germany and Sweden, where lodgings are being created any place there’s space: in empty schools, campgrounds, a boat on the River Elbe, even purpose-built aluminum crates that resemble shipping containers. In France and Italy, many end up on the street.

About 345,000 people applied for asylum in European Union nations in the first nine months of 2014, 23 percent more than a year earlier and the most since 2001. Germany, Sweden, France and Italy accounted for almost three-quarters of the total; Germany’s 113,000 exceeded the asylum applications in the U.S.

Mohamed’s ‘Mansion’

He’s now biding his time sharing a 13-square-meter room with two other Syrians in a container village on the outskirts of Berlin. “This is a mansion compared to the other places I’ve been.”

Hundreds of refugees live in such structures in the German capital: aluminum corrugated boxes stacked on top of each other and fitted with drywall, windows, kitchens and nurseries. The structures in the new villages have 15 square meters (161 square feet) of living space.

Mohamed’s camp, built two decades ago, has been slated for demolition since 2010. The age shows: Bathroom tiles are cracked, ceilings are porous and the hallways are unheated. Dirty kitchens are breeding ground for cockroaches.

The conditions add to the distress of victims traumatized by war, said Kay Wendel, a Potsdam, Germany-based refugee advocate. Learning the local language, finding a job and making friends become especially difficult living in abandoned neighborhoods with poor transport connections. The camp, surrounded by factories and power plants, is a 45-minute trip to downtown.

“Putting refugees in that type of housing stigmatizes them,” Wendel said. “Keeping them separate makes it very difficult for them to integrate.”

At least in Germany and Sweden, most people get roofs, walls and running water.

Illegal Squats

In France, the government lacks accommodation for about a third of asylum seekers, meaning that more than 20,000 people are forced to find housing with relatives or in shelters, said Laurent Delbos, advocacy manager at Forum Refugies-Cosi. Many end up in illegal squats or on the street.

“France doesn’t want to see tent cities,” Pierre Henry, director of the France Terre d’Asile advocacy group, said in a telephone interview. “But it doesn’t look like authorities are doing much to improve the situation.”

In Paris’s La Chapelle, a rundown area near the Gare du Nord train station, more than 100 refugees spend their nights in sleeping bags under the iron bridge of the elevated metro. They are mostly recent arrivals from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Their food comes from garbage cans or soup kitchens.

Italian Struggle

In Italy, the government has enough housing for all 60,000 asylum seekers in its care, according to Carlotta Sami, a United Nations spokeswoman in Rome. The problem is that people are kicked out a year after their asylum has been approved, with no assistance in finding work or shelter.

Ezzat, a 47-year-old Egyptian who’s waiting for asylum in Germany, says he spent a month in Rome with his wife and two school-aged sons, sleeping on benches in public parks and eating canned sardines and pizza.

“My sons used to say that they’re cold, but my wife and I got used to it,” he said, taking a break from watching an Egyptian serial in the room he shares with his family. Until August, their 30-square-foot space was part of an elementary school. Now, it has four beds, some lockers and a table. “Here, you arrive at the airport and they hand you clothes.”

While asylum seekers have a right to Swedish government housing, migrants from EU countries such as Romania and Bulgaria don't. They sometimes end up in makeshift shelters, such as this encampment on a forested hillside in Stockholm, Sweden.

A general view of a refugee center construction site to house refugees in Marzahn district in Berlin. In Berlin, hundreds of refugees live in housing containers: aluminum corrugated boxes stacked on top of each other and fitted with drywall, windows, kitchens and nurseries.