Begging ban in German cities: Far from the sidelines

P udel and his two buddies immediately stand out. With a bleached mohawk, he sits with the other two punks not far from “Bon'n Frietjes” with a few cups in front of them. They stay ten meters away from the chip shop, maybe 15. Definitely more than five – now that’s crucial.

It's a Saturday in mid-August in Dortmund. Westenhellweg, the large shopping street in the city, is well frequented but not overcrowded. At “Bon'n Frietjes” with its wide sales window and four bar tables in front, business is also going as it has for years. Typically Ruhr area: currywurst and fries are part of it.

Still, Pudel and the other punks here have to be extra careful. After restaurateurs were publicly outraged about the conditions in the city, begging has been banned within five meters of outdoor restaurants since the beginning of August. What Pudel, as everyone on the street would call him, comments from a good ten meters away, but surprisingly calmly: “They can’t do anything to me.” His friends are silent.

The punks sitting on the street have arranged eight cups in front of them, with eight signs in front of them with eight “donation purposes”: food, beer, tobacco, grass, fare evasion, pension, arrest warrant, whorehouse. You can conveniently put your money behind a ninth sign for a “new cup”. A man runs over from the other side of the shopping street, inspects the signs with a smile on his face and drops his coin into the “food” cup.

"The public order office just walked past here. Civil servants, I recognize them all," says Pudel. Since the ban was introduced on August 1st, patrols in the city center have been supposed to keep an eye on people begging near restaurants, on weekends and into the evening. In the first two weeks, the city simply issued warnings. There is now a risk of a warning fine of up to 50 euros or, if payment is not made, a substitute prison sentence.

There are now bans on begging in many cities, such as Munich, Cologne and Düsseldorf. Bans also apply in Hamburg and Bremen - but only on buses and trains.

Dortmund has now received media attention because it has issued a very drastic new regulation: As in Munich, not only so-called aggressive begging is prohibited here, but also passive begging - for example, when someone simply sits quietly on the floor with a cup. In Munich the ban applies in the old town pedestrian zone, and in Dortmund since August even everywhere where restaurateurs put chairs and tables outside in front of their restaurants and cafés.

Nothing has happened to Poodle yet. “We don’t beg, we scrounge,” he explains. What's the difference? “Well, begging is begging for pity, we’re scrounging.” Of course he heard about the ban, says Pudel. It is “ridiculous”, although some beggars really misbehave. He can understand the anger of restaurateurs when customers complain. But he is sure that it is still okay to scrounge quietly. “It’s also street art that we do.” His friends remain silent and grin.

Bastian Pütter smiles when he hears about Pudel. “Of course they can take action against him.” A few days later, the editorial director of bodo, a street magazine from Bochum and Dortmund that is primarily sold to homeless people, stands in front of the magazine's bookstore on the inner city ring. Pütter, a tall man, often talks and laughs at the same time. When it comes to the ban on begging, however, his laughter takes on a somewhat sarcastic tone.

“This is the new Dobrindt style,” he says right at the beginning. Simply take tough political action, even if numerous experts express legal concerns. Just like the Interior Minister from the CSU is doing with his border policy. Because it usually takes a very long time for courts to rule against the decisions.

There are already court rulings on begging bans in cities. In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights declared in the case of a woman begging in Geneva that she had the right to draw attention to her financial plight. There was a general ban in the city at the time, which was then relaxed. But begging is still not allowed in shopping areas or at train stations.

In Germany, too, municipalities are apparently not impressed by threatening court rulings. When asked, the city of Dortmund stated that it had not issued a general ban on begging, but only one that applied in front of restaurants. The aim is to ease the situation on site. Neither poverty nor homelessness would be criminalized.

Bastian Pütter finds this legally dubious. A ban on begging must be justified by threats to public safety, he says. That is not the case here. A problem for him and other helpers, however, is finding people who, like in Geneva, will sue against it. “The living situation of those affected is usually such that they don’t have the confidence to do it,” he says.

For Pütter, the begging ban is the next attempt to push poor people out of public spaces. Years ago, the city of Dortmund banned homeless people from sleeping outside at night. She abolished the fines for this in 2018 after public pressure. Since the Covid pandemic, however, repression has increased - for example through an early morning wake-up service for the homeless and higher fines for aggressive begging, which has already been banned. With the CDU mayor elected last year, says Pütter, the tone will become even sharper.

It's not far from the bodo editorial office to the Old Market. The square in the heart of the city came into particular focus during the discussion about the begging ban. Restaurants and bars line the square on three sides, their tables and chairs practically turning the five-meter rule into a large no-go zone. There are no beggars to be seen at lunchtime.

Two women are sitting there having a steak. One of them says: “Otherwise you would sit here and they would come every two minutes, it’s much better now.” She thinks the ban is right: “Nobody has to starve in Germany.”

In June, the restaurateurs at the Alter Markt wrote a letter to the city. It was also spread in the media; Pütter calls it an “outcry”. In it they complain about years of disruption caused by “neglected beggars and/or drug users”. Employees and guests are harassed hundreds of times a day. As examples, they cite men who unpacked drug paraphernalia in the market square or bathed naked in the fountain. The police and public order office, they complain, are not taking action. There remains “a feeling of frustration and powerlessness”.

And the city, which since last year has been led by the CDU for the first time in 80 years, took action. “People have been feeling uncomfortable for a long time,” said Mayor Alexander Kalouti in an interview with the Ruhr Nachrichten. And head of the legal department Norbert Dahmen said: “For me, the right of guests and innkeepers is more important than the right to beg.” The hope seems to be that where begging is forbidden, drug users stay away.

At the beginning of July, the council passed the begging ban with a large majority. The CDU, AfD and FDP/Citizens' List voted for the city council's draft. The SPD also voted in favor, but on the condition that the ban would first be tested for a year and then evaluated. The Greens, the Left and the Satire Party voted against it.

The ban actually seems to be having an effect. Around the Old Market, where guests used to be approached every minute, there is hardly any active begging to be observed in mid-August. Only a few people sit quietly with their cups, at some distance from the bars. The city is also drawing an initial positive conclusion: in August, the law enforcement officers issued just three warnings for begging in front of restaurants.

“I understand the restaurateurs, they just want to do their business,” says Pütter. But he is bothered by political promises of salvation. “The idea is always: We want the problem to go away.” Even though it may seem like it on the surface, Pütter says the problem will not go away.

Without unpacking the usual clichés of the Ruhr area as a loser in structural change: Poverty is of course something that cannot be denied in the cityscape - to use this burnt word - of Dortmund. The unemployment rate here has almost always been above ten percent since the 1980s. In 2018 and 2019 it was briefly lower, but the corona pandemic made the situation worse again.

And the drug problems in the city are also clearly visible. It's only a ten-minute walk from the Old Market to Café Kick. The red-brown clinker brick building on the western edge of the city center serves as a drug consumption room. It is intended to offer addicts a protected, more hygienic place and take consumption off the streets. It is only a few meters to the Westenhellweg shopping street. The place is a bit reminiscent of a TV series in the drug world in the USA. Visibly dependent people stand and sit on the street in front of the house. People are also loitering on a staircase down to the directly adjacent shopping center.

“This stark spatial proximity is definitely a point,” says Pütter. The city has been looking for alternative locations for a long time. A second room outside the city center is scheduled to open in the fall. The CDU actually wants to close Café Kick in the future. Pütter thinks this is wrong: help has to be where the clients are. The drug problem was one of the central election campaign issues last year.

This definitely has something to do with crack. This word comes up again and again in conversations about the begging ban. Crack is cocaine that is heated with water and baking soda, solidified into small stones and smoked with a pipe. It belongs to the category of upper drugs, so it stimulates you - or, if you want to put it more negatively: it can promote impulsive and disinhibited behavior. Because the effect wears off quickly, the pressure to get addicted is also great - and with it the need to get supplies quickly.

Lea Fischer also speaks of a “crack wave” that is leaving its mark, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia, but also in other major German cities. She conducts research at the Dortmund Institute for Regional and Urban Development Research (ILS) on marginalized groups in inner cities, currently particularly in Dortmund, Bochum and Munich. Fischer emphasizes that she is not a drug expert. In connection with the pressure of addiction, however, she observes that “intrusive begging is often the only option that addicted people see for themselves.”

Bastian Pütter now takes you on a “gauntlet run”. Actually, you just walk from Café Kick back onto Westenhellweg, towards the center. But that's perhaps how people from out of town would feel when they enter this part of the city center, says Pütter. Because here, within striking distance of the drug consumption room, on this day it seems as if a ban on begging had never been enacted.

A young man, perhaps in his late 20s, shuffles across the street with matted dark blonde hair. Despite the summer temperatures, he is wearing a thick cotton sweater. His eyes are wide open, his body is spindly. “Do you perhaps have a euro?” It's probably not a coincidence that he crosses the path: the tables of an American coffee house chain are about five meters away.

Was he already stressed about the new begging ban? “Oh, it works, actually.” He has already been briefly “sent to PG” (police custody, editor’s note) twice, but before the stricter ban on begging, but he has never received a substitute prison sentence. “Everything was strict before, no.” In any case, he always stays five meters away from the tables. “Ok, I’ll be off then, huh,” he says and says goodbye in a friendly manner.

“Now you’ve seen one of those horrible, aggressively begging crack zombies,” says Pütter with a clearly ironic undertone. “Those are the people we’re talking about here, but of course, there are a few outrageous ones too.”

Pütter does not believe that the begging ban will have a long-term effect on crack users. These people have completely different problems, so “they don’t really care what kind of fines they have to pay”. Now they are “being locked up even more regularly”.

City centers are undergoing a functional change, says urban researcher Lea Fischer: fewer visitors, more vacancies. Municipalities would therefore have to ask themselves how they can attract people to the centers. Six years ago, your institute conducted a survey about this. Accordingly, municipalities now consider cleanliness and safety to be the most important attractive feature.

“I think that also plays a role in the ban on begging,” says Fischer. A Freiburg sociologist once described it as the property rights of shops being increasingly extended to public spaces. The ILS's research on the begging ban in Munich shows one thing above all: it leads to crowding out effects. Instead of in the old town, people would now beg and camp at the nearby Isartor. “The problems can perhaps be relocated to a smaller area, but they certainly cannot be solved,” says Fischer.

But at the Old Market they might be happy with that for now. Another August day, again at lunchtime. The seats outside are half full. People from teenagers to retirement enjoy the perfect weather for sitting outside: not too hot, not too cold.

The owner of a restaurant agreed to speak to the taz. One condition: no names, neither of him nor of his restaurant. The topic is simply too explosive. He also doesn’t want audio recordings. He often takes long pauses between sentences. He doesn't want to be quoted afterwards.

In the conversation, he paints a picture of himself and the other restaurateurs as fighters for a city in a miserable condition. The begging ban was unavoidable so that guests felt safe and restaurants and public order offices had legal clarity. Without the incendiary letter, politicians would probably not have reacted. The left-wing parties in particular are totally stubborn about the issue.

He says that 20 to 40 drug addicts behave problematically. The rest of the beggars are completely okay. Nevertheless, the burden on the guests was too high. And also for the employees: Among other things, he speaks of scratched arms as a result of an argument. He doesn't provide any evidence.

The situation is now significantly better, since the ban was announced. At the same time, he is aware that this will only suppress the problem. He therefore hopes for a comprehensive solution from the city.

In fact, the restaurateur has noticed that more and more beggars are now showing up in his bistro in the Kreuzviertel, a student bar district north of the city center. Other restaurateurs from the Kreuzviertel also report this in the Ruhr Nachrichten.

Meanwhile, another term is still floating around Dortmund in the discussion about the begging ban: the Zurich model. A practice that actually dates back to the 1990s and with which the Swiss city, once a stronghold of the drug scene, still works successfully today.

The Zurich model consists of four pillars: prevention, therapy, harm reduction and repression. With the ban on begging, Dortmund aimed primarily at repression. A concept for the other areas will supposedly be developed by autumn. However, there are no plans to partially legalize drug trafficking in drug consumption rooms like in Zurich in Dortmund.

Urban researcher Lea Fischer also advocates for a broader range, for example with social workers, and, last but not least, the provision of living space. This could then perhaps be successfully combined with more repressive measures. Fischer believes that the ostensible functioning of the current ban has to do with a communicative effect: “As a law enforcement officer, this five-meter distance is much easier to convey and is also more tangible for those addressed.”

Above all, it is important that people seek conversation rather than prohibit it. In Munich, Fischer reports, for example, there is a conflict management system in which teams take action on site when people feel harassed and first negotiate the conflict on site. This is certainly not possible with all beggars, no question about it. But still: "Just talk to each other more, say, okay, you can sit two meters in front of my shop, but behave yourself. And then as a restaurateur you can bring over a coffee."

Perhaps, says Bastian Pütter in conclusion, “one has to accept that some aspects of the big city are just part of it”. This also included poverty and the need to politically moderate differences. And not the “zero tolerance approach” that politicians are currently taking.