Nobody is born homeless

Caroline Meister
works as a guide for homeless people.

Caroline Meister, born in 1974, experienced first-hand what it means to not have anywhere to go. Today, she can draw on this biographical background to help people without homes throughout Berlin in her role as a guide for homeless people on the Karuna Task Force.

One thing is certain: Homelessness is nothing Caroline Meister used to have to worry about. Even if things weren’t always rosy in her hometown of Münchberg in Upper Franconia, homelessness just didn’t exist. Her parents had five children and ran a vegetable wholesale trade in the small town.
Caroline Meister began her career working for a company in the textile industry rooted in the region; however, the job was soon unable to offer her a perspective. “I printed and labeled patterns before shipping them to various production facilities,” she tells us. “Back then, the company had 1,300 employees; a lot of people who lived in Münchberg worked there. Today, the company has around eighty administrative jobs left in Germany; the rest have been outsourced to Romania.”

After her father passed in 1994, followed by her mother in 2011, Caroline Meister no longer felt a need to stay in the Bavarian province. She moved to Berlin in 2014, finding her first sub-tenancy on eBay Classified Ads. But the mentally unstable landlord, whose wife had just died, wanted more from Caroline Meister than just rent for the room, and she could no longer stay there. She found shelter at an acquaintance’s home in the Prenzlauer Berg district – “the first part of Berlin I really got to know” – and fell in love with the area; but she couldn’t stay there forever. Meanwhile, her sister Ute and her husband had also come to Berlin, and so she joined them.

However, like Caroline Meister, neither of them had a tenancy agreement, so when she was told to leave, her sister and brother-in-law went with her. “It was winter and the three of us suddenly found ourselves on the street. So we went straight to the station and got on a suburban train. We were exhausted; we fell asleep, and when we woke up, someone had stolen our suitcases. I still had my ID card, but my sister didn’t have hers anymore, and all of our clothes were gone.”

“When I was on the street, it would have been a relief if there had already been guides for homeless people like myself.”

Caroline Meister

None of the three knew what to do next. “Where can we get something to eat, where can we sleep – back then, we had to find answers to all these questions on our own. And how were we to know – we weren’t born homeless.”

Homelessness trapped Caroline Meister in a vicious circle that was difficult to break. People without a home can’t find work, and if a person can’t find work, they can’t find a home. Caroline Meister tried anyway and found a job in a laundry on the outskirts of Neukölln. But she had to work shifts; the late shift didn’t end until 10 p.m., meaning she couldn’t reach her shelter on time to meet the 10 p.m. curfew, after which nobody else was admitted.

“My shelter on Petersburger Strasse was run by really nice people, who let me in after curfew a couple of times, but it just didn’t work in the long run. And if don’t I finish work until 10 p.m., it’s too late to start thinking about where I’m going to sleep tonight. It’s a vicious circle. You need a place to live if you want to work; you need to know where you can go after your work is done.”

Some of the pitfalls homeless people encounter seem almost absurd. Berlin, for example, offers apartments in the “protected market segment,” which are supposed to be rented out to homeless people. According to the job center, which pays benefits to and finds jobs for long-term unemployed persons, Caroline Meister was not eligible to be waitlisted for one of these apartments in the Kreuzberg district, as her SCHUFA credit score was positive. “If it had been negative,” – in other words, if the young woman had owed rent or been able to provide evidence of another kind of debt – “they would have given me an apartment.” A positive SCHUFA credit score, so the theory, would allow a person to find an apartment more easily; accordingly, the job center would not need to help them find one. Instead, the job center paid a hotel in Friedrichshain more than €1,000 per month and room to accommodate homeless people, which is where Caroline Meister finally found a place to stay in 2018. And faced another problem: The job center only covers housing costs for people who are unemployed. As soon as somebody finds a job, they automatically have to pay for accommodation themselves, and the vast majority of jobs don’t pay enough to be able to afford even a cheap hotel. Finding work in this situation is nigh impossible.

Caroline Meister was still very happy to have wound up there. “I picked that hotel myself. When I heard they still had rooms available, I went straight to the job center, and they approved.” The new lodgings truly proved a stroke of good luck. “Normally, the social welfare office assigns accommodation; basically, anyone who receives Hartz IV – benefits for long-term unemployed persons – and doesn’t have a place to live is eligible. But I’d also heard very, very bad things about the conditions and hygiene in those kinds of accommodation,” she says. “Compared to that, I was really lucky, I even had a room to myself.”

“The job description just immediately spoke to me.

Caroline Meister

Caroline Meister lived in the hotel for almost two years, until she found a regular apartment in Charlottenburg and began working as a guide for homeless people via the Solidary Basic Income (“Solidarisches Grundeinkommen,” SGE) model project. “I had a nice placement officer who thought the new project might be right up my alley.” When studying the various vacancies, she immediately knew where she wanted to apply: to Karuna, a social association that aimed to organize a novel form of assistance for homeless people. “I thought, yep, that’s it,” she says. “I know what it’s like when you don’t have a home, when there’s nowhere to go.”

Caroline Meister, who did not own a computer, completed a training, had photos taken and put together an application. “I had to apply for the job properly and they invited me in for an interview right away.” Since September 2020, she has been a guide for homeless people on the Karuna Task Force. Berlin-based social association Karuna supports vulnerable children, youths and families in particular and has expanded its field of activity with the model project funded by the Berlin Senate. The Task Force is the first project in Germany in which former homeless people work for people who are currently homeless. The basic concept behind this is that the guides’ own biographical references can be particularly helpful when it comes to reaching homeless people in a sustainable way. “I try to help in any way I can, even if it’s hard,” says Caroline Meister. “And I honestly have to say I really enjoy the work.”

The Task Force offers and coordinates guide services for homeless people. In concrete terms, this means that guides employed within the SGE project provide homeless people with information on cold and hot weather assistance; contact shelters; and accompany homeless people to authorities and institutions. A hotline is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; outside of these times, the team can be reached by email. The coronavirus pandemic meant that at times, the daily team meetings were relocated to the virtual world. “We use a WhatsApp group so we can all keep in touch with one another and as soon as we get a call, we coordinate which team will go out,” says Caroline Meister. The Task Force has four buses painted in bright colors that stand out from the cityscape and are used to take people to emergency shelters, medical examinations and authorities if they are no longer mobile themselves.

Today, Caroline Meister often works together with her sister, who is also part of Karuna. “We are often at Lichtenberg station, but last Friday, for example, we had an assignment on Greifswalder Strasse. Somebody called to notify us of a homeless person, so we drove out and found a man in a wheelchair with his friend. He came from Lithuania and spoke broken German; his friend couldn’t speak our language at all. We arranged beds for them in the emergency accommodation center on Lehrter Strasse.”

Shelters for homeless people faced particular challenges during the coronavirus pandemic; there was great concern that the virus might spread unchecked among homeless people, a particularly vulnerable group. Several offers of assistance had to be restricted due to contact bans; at the same time, Germany adapted to the pandemic, opening hostels and hotels to homeless people during lockdown. Unlike conventional emergency shelters, people were allowed to stay there during the day as well. One of the four Karuna buses was converted to a Covid transporter: Caroline Meister occasionally works the hotline, which people can call between 3 and 8 p.m. if they need to be taken to a Covid examination. The hotline also handles calls from the quarantine ward on Lehrter Strasse, from which patients are taken to the hospital. The people who drive the Karuna bus received special training to ensure compliance with all coronavirus measures; in the evenings, after the last trip, the bus is cleaned and prepared for the next day.

The Task Force’s hotline is not only there for calls from homeless people who are in need; citizens who notice homeless people or people in need are welcome to call as well. As soon as a call comes in, the office sends out a team of two which seeks out the homeless person or persons, assesses the situation and immediately discusses next steps with the office. Frequently, this means arranging accommodation for the next night, but may also include organizing medical care, food, or coordinating communications with various authorities.

Today, Caroline Meister is well aware of what it means to be homeless. She had a lucky escape, has an apartment and, thanks to the SGE project, a well-paid job.

“I used to have to keep a tally of everything in my head to make sure the money didn’t run out. I still do that to an extent.

Caroline Meister

“When I started, I made €1,615 net,” she says. Today, she makes €50 more. “I used to get Hartz IV, so this is a completely different ball game.”

Back then, she tells us today, she had to plan every single purchase down to the last detail, otherwise, she would not have been able to pay for everything. “Now I can just get myself a t-shirt for €10 without really having to think about it. You can’t do that on Hartz IV.”

Copy: Katrin Rohnstock / Rohnstock Biografien