From the street to parliament

Election campaign with few resources. 58-year-old Thomas Lindlmair (independent) is running for the Berlin House of Representatives

René Krüger sits on a frayed carpet at his usual spot in front of a supermarket in Berlin-Neukölln and reports that he no longer has a postal address. "If you can't be contacted for office, it'll be incredibly difficult to get money," Thomas Lindlmair tells him, pursing his lips. Whether Krüger entered the voter register for the Berlin election to the House of Representatives? The homeless man says no. Lindlmair continues to talk to him for half an hour. This is rather unusual for a politician in an election campaign with little time. As he says goodbye, he gives Krüger a five-euro note and his business card, on which he has handwritten the address of the Union for Homeless Law (UfO), and adds: "We meet every second Tuesday, come by."

It was anything but predetermined that Lindlmair would seek a political mandate. For health reasons, he took early retirement in his thirties. “At that time I completely collapsed,” the Bavarian native tells Jungle World. You can still hear his origins in him. When he was evicted from his apartment in a Bavarian city, he first moved to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and later came to Berlin. According to his own statement, Lindlmair spent three nights on the street there in the winter of 2020 before a lawyer sued him for accommodation. He was homeless for a total of two years. He now has an apartment again and is committed to the rights of the homeless.

“I collect bottles on the side to finance the election campaign.” Thomas Lindlmair, non-party candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives

According to the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, around 57,000 people lived in Berlin's emergency accommodation in January 2026 - around ten times more than in 2012; In addition, there are around 6,000 to 7,000 homeless people on the streets. The main cause is the housing shortage, which has worsened dramatically in recent years. According to the Investitionsbank Berlin (IBB), there was a supply deficit of at least 73,500 apartments between 2012 and 2022. “The more expensive and scarce housing is, the more people become homeless,” said Timothy Redfern, consultant for poverty and emergency housing assistance at the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, at a press conference. Homelessness is often caused by individual strokes of fate, but its causes are structural.

We continue on Neukölln Hermannstrasse. Lindlmair not only carries a backpack and pulls a cart full of election posters, but also drags a large plastic bag with him. “I collect bottles on the side to finance the election campaign,” he says. The fact that the man with the gray beard has no party apparatus behind him is not only noticeable financially. Above all, he admits, he lacks time and knowledge. For example, he doesn't know much about social media. Instead, Lindlmair hopes for the QR codes that lead to his website and that he has printed on all of his election posters. An acquaintance was so enthusiastic about his candidacy that she made him 60 election posters by hand out of cardboard. However, he has to hang it up alone. While Lindlmair presses a poster to a lantern with his body, he attaches one cable tie after another and tightens them. In between he groans: “Another badly punched hole.”

Lindlmair is making this effort because he has a big goal. He wants to enshrine an enforceable right to one's own apartment in the Berlin constitution. »Tenants must be significantly more protected against losing their apartment; no matter what they have on their plate,” he says. Because hunger, violence and drugs were waiting on the streets. "It was only through my commitment today that I realized what I had been spared." That's exactly what he wants to bring to the House of Representatives under the motto "Someone like you." Lindlmair criticizes the fact that it is mainly academics who sit there: “As a formerly homeless person, I have no chance with the established parties.” He already ran as an individual candidate in the 2021 federal election. This time he is trying again in the 2nd Neukölln constituency – which stretches from Hermannplatz to the Ringbahn. Isn't that hopeless? “If I always think first about whether I’m really successful, I don’t even have to start,” answers Lindlmair with a shrug.

"If I always think first about whether I'm really successful, I don't even have to start." Thomas Lindlmair

The issue of housing is present in the election campaign, especially by the Left Party. This makes the socialization of large housing companies a condition for a coalition. Although Lindlmair collected hundreds of signatures for the referendum in 2021, he now believes it is wrong: “I am a pragmatist. Times change - what was right yesterday can be wrong today. He fears that due to the rise in real estate prices and the increase in interest rates, the costs of socialization would be much higher today and this would therefore cause rents to rise sharply. In the event of socialization, the plan is to pay off the resulting compensation payments through the rent.

Lindlmair also sharply criticizes the CDU for its plans to develop Tempelhofer Feld. While he was hanging up a poster, a Tempelhofer spoke to him. The man is afraid that the development will also increase the rent index in the area. »Then I have to get out of there. But this is my home!” he shouts indignantly. Lindlmair senses his chance: "Look, I'm an individual candidate and I'm fighting for the preservation of Tempelhofer Feld." But the man has already voted for the Left Party. Lindlmair grimaces. Nevertheless, he is satisfied with the election campaign. “I didn’t expect that I would get any support at all,” he says. It's what will happen after the election that counts, because: "The phrases on the election posters don't help any tenants."