Close accommodation

Ukraine refugees soon face homelessness

The center for Ukrainian refugees will close at the end of the year.(Bild: Zwefo)

With the closure of the arrival center for Ukrainians in Vienna at the end of the year, Austria is facing a new problem in refugee care. Because if nothing changes by then, newly arrived displaced persons will be threatened with homelessness for at least a few days if they cannot find accommodation with relatives or acquaintances. Before Vienna, all other countries had already closed their arrival centers.

In purely formal terms, Ukrainians must register with the police as soon as they reach Austria and then submit their application for basic welfare support to the relevant social welfare institution, e.g. the Vienna Social Fund in Vienna, if they wish to use this instrument. Until this application is approved after a few days (usually positively), the arrival centers of the federal states are responsible for accommodating them.

Closing the last quarters
This last point is where the problems have arisen in recent months. With the exception of a smaller accommodation facility in Linz, the respective federal states have closed all facilities apart from those in Nenzing (Vorarlberg) and Vienna-Hütteldorf. Now that the black-blue state government in Vorarlberg has also shut down its accommodation, the Viennese have had enough.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Austria has become a place of refuge for many refugees.(Bild: P. Huber)

The center for Ukrainian refugees will close at the end of the year.(Bild: Zwefo)

Last week, the Vienna Social Fund announced that the facility in the federal capital will also close at the end of the year. It was already exceptionally busy with over 200 people. This means that from January there will not be a single bed available for displaced persons before they are admitted to basic care.

Countries responsible from the outset
The difference to asylum seekers is that the federal states are responsible for Ukrainians from the outset. In contrast, the federal government handles the initial registration of asylum seekers in the initial reception centers. The Ministry of the Interior points out that the federal states receive a flat-rate cost contribution of 190 euros per displaced person in arrival centers. In basic care, the federal government would have to bear 60 percent of the costs anyway.

However, this amount is either too little for the federal states or they simply do not want to have an arrival center. Vienna argues that the federal capital has borne the greatest burden in terms of refugees for years. At the end of September, Vienna fulfilled 198 percent of the quota between the federal states. In absolute figures, that is 11,852 more people than would need to be looked after. By way of illustration: there are currently almost 11,000 Ukrainians housed in the federal capital alone.

Targets clearly missed in some cases
No other state meets the specified quota, although Burgenland, Styria and Vorarlberg are at least close. The situation is completely different in Upper Austria, Carinthia and Tyrol, where not even 60 percent of the targets were met. An additional effect for Vienna is that, unlike asylum seekers, Ukrainians can choose where they settle. Asylum seekers can simply be assigned to the federal states.

While the Ministry of the Interior does not intend to take any measures for January due to a lack of responsibility according to the current agreement, Vienna sees the Ministry of the Interior as having a responsibility. The responsible city councillor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) recently said that he assumed that the Minister of the Interior, together with the Federal Care Agency (BBU), would take the appropriate measures. The BBU, on the other hand, has repeatedly appealed to the federal states to fulfill their responsibilities.

2000 new arrivals in September
It is currently unclear how to get out of the difficult situation. In practice, it would be possible to let the Ukrainians wait in the initial reception centers for their admission, as these are currently not overcrowded. Around 500 people have been staying in Traiskirchen at any one time. However, the federal government would have to be prepared to take over the tasks of the federal states, which does not appear to be the case at present. However, a solution should be found, as 2,000 displaced persons from Ukraine arrived in Austria again in September and in view of the approaching winter and the continuing Russian aggression, it is unlikely that these numbers will decrease in the coming weeks.