A safe place: A mini house, which the musician Erik La Plante moved into a month ago, measures two four meters. The containers are not intended for living, but only for spending the night.
Image: Marcus Kaufhold
The privately initiated “Roof over the Head” project in Wiesbaden is growing. Here, donations are used to make wooden containers for sleeping places. By the end of the year, more mini-houses will provide homeless people with accommodation.
Erik La Plante is visibly in a good mood and gives a relaxed impression. The 51-year-old man stands in the courtyard of the Protestant Reconciliation Community in Wiesbaden’s Aukammviertel and makes plans for his personal new beginning. The homeless person also has the opportunity to do this because he now has a safe place to sleep. La Plante is one of three men without a permanent address in the state capital for whom the “Roof Over the Head” project is currently giving them the chance to return to a middle-class life. He has been living in an eight square meter mini house for a month and a half and says: “It is a gift to now have a place to retreat to again and to be able to close the door behind you.” The small wooden houses are financed exclusively with donations.
The Wiesbaden boutique owner Betina Weiler and Matthias Röhrig, manager of the Diakonie tea room on Dotzheimer Straße, initiated the project. “Every person we get off the street and who doesn’t have to freeze outside in the winter is a success for us,” says Weiler. She still remembers how her commitment to people without a permanent address came about. In November 2015, she was standing in front of the Nordsee restaurant in the pedestrian zone and next to her a homeless man was searching his pockets for change to buy a fish sandwich. “I invited him to eat with me in the North Sea and he told me his story. That touched me very much. “I then decided to do something,” says Weiler.
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