The city of Berlin has announced it will be expanding its migrant reception centre at the former Tegel airport to create room for an additional 3,600 Ukrainian refugees as the city saw a surge of new migrant arrivals this year.
The local government in Berlin has stated that two new large tents will be erected on the site of the former airport, which closed in 2021, with the tents being equipped with heaters for the winter.
The expansion comes after the former terminals of the airport had also been allocated to house Ukrainians fleeing the conflict in their country after the Russian invasion in February.
There are already around 1,500 Ukrainians living at the former airport, with the majority being women with their children, the European Union-funded website InfoMigrants reports.
According to the website, Berlin had a total of 28,000 beds reserved for asylum seekers and refugees prior to the Ukraine conflict but has been forced to increase that number after the surge of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war.
Berlin is not the only place in Germany to see a surge of new migrant arrivals, as in addition to the estimated one million Ukrainians who have entered Germany this year, many other asylum seekers from countries like Afghanistan and Syria have also entered the country, pushing the capacity of regions house migrants to their limits.
Late last month, Berlin’s Mayor Franziska Giffey warned that her city was at capacity in terms of being able to house migrants and that other cities had also exhausted their capacity to provide housing and accommodation.
The problem has also been seen in neighbouring Austria, which is also seeing problems with housing new asylum seekers and refugees, as some localities have erected tent camps to deal with the new flows of migrants across the Balkan route, while the city of Vienna has resorted to using a luxury hotel to house Ukrainian refugees.