New York City settlement houses experience Berlin’s refugee crisis

In late September Chris and I traveled to Berlin to attend the biennial conference of the International Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers. Also attending were many leaders of New York City settlement houses and community centers.

We both felt it was a profound experience to be in Berlin at this particular time. That city, as well as the entire country of Germany and in fact all of Europe, is currently grappling with the influx and resettlement of millions of refugees from the disrupted and war-torn nations of the Middle East, most prominently Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Berlin alone has received about 60,000 refugees and Germany over 1 million – the most of any country in the world except for Turkey. 2015 saw the largest movement of refugees worldwide since World War II.

The title of the conference was “On the Move: At Home in the World,” a very timely look at the global phenomenon (and huge challenges) of flight and migration. The deputy mayor of Berlin described the challenge well: The successful integration of these new Berliners is now Berlin’s most urgent task, recognizing that “whether or not the refugees will successfully integrate will be determined locally in the city’s districts and quarters – exactly where neighborhood centers are active and where a mutual coexistence is formed.”

Excellent rhetoric, but how is it going? And are there lessons in this experience for our city of New York? As part of the conference, we were provided the opportunity to visit some of Berlin’s neighborhood houses currently involved in refugee resettlement services. We also had the opportunity to visit the site of a year-old temporary refugee center in Berlin at Tempelhof that is now sheltering about 1,500 individuals in what was a vast former Nazi-era airport.

For Chris and I, who both have been involved in the settlement house and community center movement in New York City for many years, the visit to the neighborhood house called Nachbarschaftshaus Urbanstrasse felt very familiar. It was located in the Kreuzberg neighborhood, which formerly was practically up against the wall separating East and West Berlin before that wall came down in 1989. The organization was housed in a historic old building and provided a fully contemporary range of services, including child care, elder care and, lately, services for new immigrants and refugees. Not only were the neighborhood house building and services very familiar to us, so too was its challenge in serving the neighborhood’s newcomers.

Right next door to the Urbanstrasse was a primary school. The Berlin city government had made the decision in very much of a crisis mode to temporarily shelter refugees in the school’s gym. Naturally, the neighborhood house stepped in to assist their new neighbors and to link the refugees at the gym with needed resources and services; that’s what settlement houses do.

However, what also was familiar was the pushback. Parents of schoolchildren felt angry because their children no longer had access to the school’s gym. An older generation of immigrants to Kreuzberg, Turks, felt resentful and fearful that this new group would disrupt their own place in that community and taint their hard-won acceptance. As has been the case in New York City, the newcomers were perceived by older immigrants as less desirable and less responsible than the well-established group.

And like settlement houses in New York, the Urbanstrasse neighborhood house was engaged in important work to bring different neighborhood groups with opposing views together to meet in their neutral space. Urbanstrasse facilitated discussions about ways in which the community could come together to meet the needs and challenges of the refugees, a time-honored and critical role settlement houses have played here in New York City and, as I know now, internationally as well.

For those of us who have observed over many years the NIMBY (not in my backyard) phenomenon as New York City struggled to deal with its homeless crisis, this was all too familiar. But we felt undeniably proud that place-based social agencies were taking the lead in bringing neighborhood factions together by establishing safe places for dialogue and negotiation and, hopefully, agreement and acceptance.

The visit to the Tempelhof airport refugee center was another story entirely. Again, as anyone who has experienced New York City’s attempt to shelter homeless people in the 1980s and 1990s by using vast abandoned armories, this too felt sadly familiar. Congregate shelters for families, which Tempelhof surely is, is at best an emergency response to a crisis situation. It was a depressing place, lightened only by the dedication and passion of young staff and volunteers many from local neighborhood houses, who were working on both a policy and individual level to improve a bad situation. For refugees suffering displacement, trauma and loss, not to mention the cold weather that Berlin offers compared to their home countries, how can this experience be anything but very, very difficult? Berlin’s housing situation is not as difficult as New York’s on both the supply and affordability front, so there is hope that low-cost housing can be found quickly for these families and individuals, making it possible to imagine that positive outcomes are possible.

We left feeling admiration for Germany’s government for its international leadership in welcoming refugees and for accepting responsibility at a time when other world powers have not, including our own government here in the United States. For Germany, taking in refugees is no longer a theoretical or political discussion point. The refugees have arrived, 1 million and counting. How they will fare one year from now or five years from now and beyond will be very interesting to see. Will Germans offer integration and inclusion? Or will these newcomers remain poor, isolated and marginalized?

We hope to go back to Berlin sometime soon to see how it turns out. But one thing is certain: Social work and local social service agencies are a key part of the solution if the refugee crisis is to be addressed in a humane and successful way.

Christopher Hanway is executive director of the Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement House. Nancy Wackstein is director of community engagement and partnerships at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service.