INSP

A new start for the residents of Hinz&Kunzt-Haus

BY SYBILLE ARENDT

Dennis has to laugh at himself. “I didn’t know how to wind in the cable from the vacuum cleaner,” he chuckles. “It’s such a long time since I did the hoovering!” After the first few nights in his new shared apartment, the 46-year-old is getting around to thinking about doing the housework. On top of that, he’s finally had a few decent nights’ sleep. “That did me good,” he grins. Dennis really does look well – as if he’s just been on holiday. He’s even gone and got a new hair cut: the “man bun” with shaved sides suits him. Dennis got involved with Hinz&Kunzt as far back as 1996. He’d only just turned 20 back then, and his drug habit was making him ill. His mother had died when he was just 14; a heavy burden for him to bear. “I took drugs to forget,” he says. Dennis lived on the streets for a long time, even after deciding to undergo substitution treatment for his addiction. He often looked and felt terrible. Now, though, he says, “I feel like I’ve won the jackpot.” Another thing that makes Dennis and his flatmates happy in their new home is the provision of certain everyday living aids, which make life a bit easier for them. “We’ve even got a dishwasher. It’s so cool,” he says. “I never thought I’d ever have one of those.” Sharing a flat is an ideal set-up for Dennis, who tells me that he wouldn’t be able to cope on his own. He wonders how communal living will work out and has already accepted that he and his flatmates will have to make compromises. But it will all work out – he’s sure of that. “We’re a family.”

“I got so tired of living.” Marc’s son died when he was just a few months old. He was severely disabled and spent his last days in a hospice. That was ten years ago. “I got so tired, tired of living,” says Marco, who now sells copies of Hinz&Kunzt. “I went downhill. Drugs and alcohol.” Marc works hard, both in the warehouse and by helping the production team. He wants to work his cares away. “I’d got to the point that I just couldn’t carry on,” he says. Marco left Lübeck for Hamburg, where he was born 45 years ago. “I walked for days along the Elbe-Lübeck Canal. I had no money, but I didn’t want to try to get away without paying for the train.” Things didn’t get any better in Hamburg. Due to severe depression brought on by alcohol and drugs, he ended up in the Emergency Room at Hamburg’s University Medical Center in Eppendorf, and then a hostel in the Burgwedel district. “We were two to a room,” he tells me. “That wasn’t good. Everything fell apart again, I completely let myself go.” Marco alternated between being in psychiatric care and sleeping rough. In 2018 he was back on the streets, sleeping rough in Mümmelmannsberg. Then he made the decision to get off drugs. “I’ve been clean since then,” he says. “But I carry my past with me. I make no secret of that.”

A Hinz&Kunzt vendor tipped him off about selling the magazine. “I liked that idea better than scrounging all the time,” says Marco. Through this he got to know Hinz&Kunzt social worker Jonas Gengnagel, who got him into a hostel and then found him a room in Farmsen, on the outskirts of Hamburg. “When Jonas asked me if I wanted to move into this shared apartment, I was dead keen straight away. I don’t really like living on my own.” Marco has now spent two nights in his own room in the apartment. He smiles shyly to himself. “The apartment’s a bit overwhelming,” he admits. “The bed’s really great, I’ve got a television and my own bathroom. That means I can get myself ready in peace.”

“At last! A room all to myself!” Marcel is a cheerful sort of guy: he has a broad smile and looks quite self-assured. His cheeriness is remarkable when you look at his feet, which are clad in orthopaedic shoes. After an accident at work, Marcel had to have eight operations – since then, he’s been in constant pain. The 53-year-old Hinz&Kunzt vendor uses a wheelchair on a daily basis. He’s thrilled to bits about his new room in the shared apartment. “Unbelievable. I can’t tell you how great it is,” he says. “My German’s not good enough, anyway.” Marcel comes from Romania, although he hasn’t been back there for 20 years. In Hamburg, he had been living at “Pik As”, the emergency accommodation provided by the city authorities, and sometimes in a hostel. He approached Hinz&Kunzt in December 2020. Social worker Jonas Gengnagel suggested that he might be interested in living in the shared apartment. Marcel is very happy with it. “It’s incredible,” he smiles. “At last! A room to myself!” The room is somewhere where Marcel can prepare for his German-language exams, watch films or just enjoy communal living with the others. Is there anything else he’d like? “Flowers in my room,” he smiles.

Additional Information: The Hinz&Kunzt-Haus is home to 24 people who are living in shared apartments. A family apartment is part of the set-up, too. Some of the new tenants had, through Hinz&Kunzt, been put up in rooms out in Farmsen, to get them off the streets. A conscious decision was made to spend money equipping and furnishing the apartments, so that people who had spent years being homeless, sofa-surfing at friends’ places or living in homeless accommodation could have a freshly made bed of their own. All of the new tenants have their own bedrooms but share the living room and kitchen. They were chosen by the team of social workers at Hinz&Kunzt, and the tenancy agreements are indefinite.

Courtesy of Hinz&Kunzt / International Network of Street Papers. Translated from German by Peter Bone