Hochschulseminar – Vom Wert des Privaten in der Stadt
 
EXPERIMENT – Privatheit auf der Straße
Vanessa Stubba, Dilan Bataray, Binnur Yildirim, Xichuan Wu, Vahid Peyravi, 03.02.2022

Experiment – "On the Value of Privacy in the City"

Experiment: Surveying homeless people on the subject of privacy on the street

As part of the module "On the value of Privacy in the City", we conducted a survey of homeless people in Bremen on the subject of "Privacy on the street". In the run-up, we thought about a few questions that we would like to ask the homeless. For example, "Does Privacy exist on the street?", "Do you feel watched?" and "Do you lack Privacy?".

After our first attempt to interview a homeless person in front of the train station, we quickly realized that "privacy" on the street does not exist and what exists is "loneliness".

So we have Martin, a volunteer who works for the poor and distributes food and clothes every Saturday, with many other helpers, at the Cineplex in front of the main station. He told us many stories about homeless people and introduced us to some of them personally so that we could talk to them.

The people who live on the street do not know about Privacy, many of them have had traumatic experiences and suffer from mental health problems. The homeless man at the train station was threatened by his neighbor and therefore does not want to return to his apartment. Another homeless person we got to know is mentally ill and thinks she is at home at the train station, for you there is an apartment only the problem is to take you there. Another does not want to apply for an ID and therefore cannot find an apartment.  Others do not want to go to emergency shelters and prefer to live alone on the streets because they have been robbed how.

Often no institutions help homeless people, because there is a lack of private attachment/friendship to the people. So we were able to take out of the experiment that there is no privacy on the street, but what you can give people is the familiarity and friendliness, which also makes the private aus and gives people just. The feeling of security is more important to these people than privacy.