For two decades, Dirk Dymarski was homeless, living partly in emergency homeless shelters, and partly on the streets. It was, he says, "not something you can just shake off." But it also changed the way he thought.

"Being homeless for 20 years was a lesson for me in every way because I used to think and act in a discriminatory, stigmatizing way myself," he told DW. "But in the last few years, I realized that anyone can get into that situation, and it is difficult to get out of it."

Dymarski is now part of the Freistätter Online Zeitung, a local newspaper written by homeless people in the small town Freistatt, Lower Saxony, and a member of Selbstvertretung Wohnungsloser Menschen ("Self-Representation for Homeless People"), an organization aimed at giving the homeless a political voice in Germany.

The biggest obstacle for homeless people trying to find a home, he says, is the stigma. "If you want to get out of homelessness and find an affordable place to live, the first question you get asked is: Where do you live at the moment? And if you tell a potential landlord you live in a shelter, you'll fall through the cracks pretty quickly."

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Homelessness has risen over the last few years, thanks to an ongoing lack of affordable housing. Though exact figures are difficult to ascertain, the German government estimates that there are around 375,000 homeless people in the country, while the Federal Working Group on Assistance for the Homeless (BAG-W) puts the number at 600,000, some 50,000 of whom live on the streets. Those figures include anyone who doesn't have a rental contract or their own home. German authorities are........

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