Asternweg

 A couple of days ago, via a public TV news show ('Mainz Report')....the topic of 'Asternweg' came up.

It's a familiar word.

I lived for about 15 years around the Kaiserslautern area of Germany.  Most everyone in the town knows Asternweg.  It's a neighborhood on the eastern part of town....probably 500 ft by 1,000 ft....consisting of eleven apartment buildings.  

In simple terms....it's a four-star ghetto operation.  No heat, no hot water, 

The ultra-poor or welfare cases of Kaiserslautern?  This is where they live.

One of the commercial networks went back around 2015 and did a long documentary piece of the neighborhood.  In terms of massive embarrassment to the city management folks....this did the job.  They jumped up and for around six months....major chatter about how they would fix the problem.

So what's happened in Asternweg since 2015?  Nothing.  SWR, public TV for the region tells the entire story.

Roughly 260 apartments....all constructed in the 1950s with just basic conditions, and nothing much updated since the building was finished. What can be said is that one single building out of the eleven....got some basic touches and improvements.

Rough neighborhood?  No, that's one of the funny parts to the story.  You can walk through this area.....no mafia types.....no druggies....no murders.

What you have are mostly people without any desire to work, alcoholics, and families with five to eight kids....without the means to get ahead.

The fact that the political system doesn't want to get into this issue?  They don't see a pay-back.  Roughly a 1,000 residents from this neighborhood....out of a city of about 95k total.  

But this all goes back to the 1980s German government attitude that came around for cities to all dump ownership of public housing (selling them off to companies), and not having any desire to upgrade or renovate what existed at the time with public housing.  We are at the tail-end of this whole issue, and the absolute desire of city officials to avoid this type of mess because it's a funding issue to resolve.  

Right now?  With elections creeping up?  Well....it's dragging up issues that you really didn't want to face, as a city council member.