A Housing Story

 Focus tells a fairly amusing story about once a month, which you kinda wonder where the common-sense or practical Germans were in the leadership or decision process.

So this is the tale that unfolded in Berlin.

The bureaucrats at the city-management level determined that they didn't have enough apartments for incoming migrants/immigrants.

So they went to this idea of modular buildings.

The basis of this story really started around 2007....when a property was granted to a apartment building group....wanted to build properties that were kinda stacked up, but they had a garden/lawn property across the street.

The selling point, in accepting less space and living stacked-up.....was that the lawn and garden was there to compliment this.

So around spring of 2020....a new plan was put up without a lot of discussion.  In this gard/lawn area...18 meters away from the housing of 2007.....would be a modular refugee housing situation.

These developments (for the migrants), if you figure the total plan around the whole city (repeating this process of just planting modular buildings in what was garden areas)....amounts to 6,000 apartments around the city.  One single planning process?  That's the curious thing....they avoided neighborhood by neighborhood planning...it was just one single city-wide plan.

Amount to be spent?  It goes up to around 1.3-billion Euro.

The comical side of this....going back to 2007.....these private residents asked at that point in time....could you allow us to buy the garden property?  They wanted to ensure that it never got into development.  Well....NO, the city didn't want to take that move.

So you've got a bunch of folks who spent a fair amount of money for what they felt was a sufficent amount of privacy (at least back 13 years ago), and without much discussion....the neighborhood has changed in a drastic way.  

Court action?  Yes, but I seriously doubt this goes anywhere.

Pissing off the locals to city managers and politicians?  More than likely.  But no one from the city seemed willing to ask questions or get public opinions.  

But here's the item to ponder upon....if you went to a thousand migrants and laid out the design of this, and how compacted the neighborhood has become....even half of that population will admit this is pretty crazy.