German woman evicted to make room for Syrian refugees?

[Borgholio]

I added a ? to the thread topic because I can't find any really reliable source on the story. In a nutshell, her and another woman living in municipally-owned housing are supposedly being evicted to make room for incoming Syrian refugees. I'm taking this story with a grain of salt because I can't find any decent verification, and because it sounds so unlikely that there has to be more to it that's not being reported. Thoughts?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ugees.html

A woman in Germany is being evicted from her home of 23 years to make way for asylum-seekers, in the second such case to emerge.

Gabrielle Keller has been given until the end of the year to leave her flat in the small southern town of Eschbach, near the border with France.

The flat belongs to the local municipality, which says it is needed to house refugees.

“I think it’s a scandal to throw tenants out of their apartments,” the 56-year-old Ms Keller told SWR television. “I can’t see the sense of it.”

Towns and cities across Germany are struggling to find accommodation for the tens of thousands of refugees streaming into the country.

Ms Keller’s case follows that of Bettina Halbey, a nurse who is being evicted from her home of 16 years in the town of Nieheim, hundreds of miles to the north.

Mario Schlafke, the mayor of Eschbach, says the town had no choice but to ask Ms Keller to leave.

“The council hasn’t taken a frivolous decision,” he told Welt newspaper. “The alternative would have been to set up beds in the gym.”

The town of just 2,400 people is under pressure to find space for refugees, and Ms Keller’s flat is one of only two owned by the local municipality. It is not social housing and Ms Keller is a rent-paying tenant.

A shipping container has already been set up as temporary accommodation on a local football field, while a family of eight are being accommodated in a youth centre.

“Our backs are to the wall,” Claudia Geiselbrecht, a local councillor, told Badische Zeitung, a local newspaper.

The municipality says it has offered to help Ms Keller find new accommodation, a claim she denies. She has hired a lawyer and vowed to fight the eviction.

The news came as a new poll showed the stark divide in pulic opinion over Angela Merkel’s refugee policy between the former East Germany and the rest of the country.

Only 24 per cent of those polled in the former East named Mrs Merkel as the politician they trust most, down from 32 per cent just a month ago, the survey for the Insa Institute found.

But in the former West, 33 per cent named Mrs Merkel – up from 31 per cent in August.

The West’s larger population means that nationally support for the Chancellor remains strong.

[madd0ct0r]

I can find links for their first story to the origional Die Welt Article, but not for this one. Other papers also reporting it though.

[Lictuel]

Look here, source is in German though:
http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/ ... Tritt.html

The first time I've read of this was on reddit linking to rt.com which was linking to welt.de. Seems to be real. She has not be evicted yet though, she rents and was given a 9 months notice that she has to leave her flat. Its 9 months because the woman was living in that flat for 16 years and the law says thats how long the notice has to be.

[Borgholio]

Would part of the issue being that if the city owns the property, they can evict people for whatever reason they want, as if they were a landlord on private property?

[Edi]

Would part of the issue being that if the city owns the property, they can evict people for whatever reason they want, as if they were a landlord on private property?

Yes.

[Welf]

More or less; they can quit the lease (or think they can) because they need the space for their "own usage", in this case the legal requirement to provide housing for asylum seekers. In German law you cannot terminate a lease contract for housing without "legitimate interest", and the law explicitly excludes increase of rent. And that is the law for private rent, which also binds public housing.

[Thanas]

There is also the provision for social necessity which allows the Government to possibly do this. That being said, I can't see why they would even try this. This is not the way to create goodwill among the populace and get them to accept newcomers. Especially because the women in question is a nurse and nurses already have it hard enough as it is.

[Edi]

More or less; they can quit the lease (or think they can) because they need the space for their "own usage", in this case the legal requirement to provide housing for asylum seekers. In German law you cannot terminate a lease contract for housing without "legitimate interest", and the law explicitly excludes increase of rent. And that is the law for private rent, which also binds public housing.

It works very much the same way here. When I split up with my ex, I needed to terminate the lease my tenants had on my apartment, because obviously I needed it for my own use. Since they had been tenants for over a year, the notice period was six months. They found a new place within one month, which made many things thankfully much easier for me.

But like Thanas said, PR-wise this case is a disaster for the German government.

[Thanas]

It's not really the Government though, it is one swamped municipality which does not know any other way to deal with the refugee crisis. But the PR is pretty bad as conservative sources tend to trumpet this up in order to stoke fear.

[Enigma]

Ninja'd by Thanas. Yeah, a PR disaster and a good way to generate ill will against the refugees.

[Elheru Aran]

I suspect some functionary is about to get canned quickly or at the very least yelled at. Evicting people is *not* the way to go here. What the way *is*, I can't say, but it's got to be better than this.

[Welf]

Unlikely; this was the major of the town who decided this, and the local public was aware of this before he got re-election 2 weeks ago. And it does make sense that the local authorities would rather use their own property than rent private space for more money. Their budget will strained enough. Still bad PR.

[Enigma]

Unlikely; this was the major of the town who decided this, and the local public was aware of this before he got re-election 2 weeks ago. And it does make sense that the local authorities would rather use their own property than rent private space for more money. Their budget will strained enough. Still bad PR.

What major? I didn't know the military was involved.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Unlikely; this was the major of the town who decided this, and the local public was aware of this before he got re-election 2 weeks ago. And it does make sense that the local authorities would rather use their own property than rent private space for more money. Their budget will strained enough. Still bad PR.

What major? I didn't know the military was involved.

Welf is german. A J in german is pronounced like the english Y. It is an easy mistake.

[Grumman]

There is also the provision for social necessity which allows the Government to possibly do this.

Unless they are evicting a lone tenant from a four bedroom apartment, that cannot reasonably be used as a justification here. Social necessity does not make a Syrian refugee's use of this apartment more important than the use by the German who already lives there. If anything, it is the other way around - a government's first obligation is to the wellbeing of its own people - the people who the government exists to serve, whose taxes pay for its existence.

[Thanas]

There is also the provision for social necessity which allows the Government to possibly do this.

Unless they are evicting a lone tenant from a four bedroom apartment, that cannot reasonably be used as a justification here.

Please point out your qualifications in German law so that I know you are not just pulling things out of your ass.

[AMX]

I can't help feeling the "bad PR" is the actual point - this will definitely cause more people to think "we don't have room for those refugees, the government should stop letting them in."

Anybody know the party affiliation of the mayor?

[Grumman]

There is also the provision for social necessity which allows the Government to possibly do this.

Unless they are evicting a lone tenant from a four bedroom apartment, that cannot reasonably be used as a justification here.

Please point out your qualifications in German law so that I know you are not just pulling things out of your ass.

If German law holds that it is more socially necessary for a Syrian refugee to have housing than it is for a German resident to have housing, German law is wrong. It is, at best, a zero sum game.

[Edi]

There is also the provision for social necessity which allows the Government to possibly do this.

Unless they are evicting a lone tenant from a four bedroom apartment, that cannot reasonably be used as a justification here. Social necessity does not make a Syrian refugee's use of this apartment more important than the use by the German who already lives there. If anything, it is the other way around - a government's first obligation is to the wellbeing of its own people - the people who the government exists to serve, whose taxes pay for its existence.

As a point of order, this is not an eviction in a legal sense. It is a notice of termination of a lease, which a landlord is within his rights to do. Unless of course you subscribe to the idea that a landlord has no right to do such things.

Eviction is, at least here, and probably also in Germany, an entirely different legal term, which means tossing a person out on their ear without observing the normal notice periods and such. Or tossing someone out on their ear after they refuse to leave when the notice period expires. Typically eviction comes into play for non-payment of rent or other violations of the terms of the lease and it usually requires a court order.

[salm]

If German law holds that it is more socially necessary for a Syrian refugee to have housing than it is for a German resident to have housing, German law is wrong. It is, at best, a zero sum game.

This is about one German vs five Syrians, not one vs one.
There are several cases where people are being evicted from their homes. Some because of situations like this one, some because the houses were built as refugee housing but not needed for a while and then rented out to normal people.

Some of these cases, like this one will be decided by courts. Since in Germany renters have lots of rights I assume that a most cases will be decided in favor of the renters.
In some other cases renters will lose their home.

[Thanas]

Unless they are evicting a lone tenant from a four bedroom apartment, that cannot reasonably be used as a justification here.

Please point out your qualifications in German law so that I know you are not just pulling things out of your ass.

If German law holds that it is more socially necessary for a Syrian refugee to have housing than it is for a German resident to have housing, German law is wrong. It is, at best, a zero sum game.

You don't understand what the legal term "social necessity" means within German law or even what laws regulate it, do you? If you do, please quote the specific § I am referring to.