Tenants of a housing estate in Berlin say their landlords have failed to keep them properly informed about an outbreak of .
In mid-March, health authorities in the Neukölln district of imposed a shower ban on 332 apartments in the “High-Deck” estate after tests showed elevated levels of the Legionella bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease, a potentially deadly form of pneumonia.
However, it is not clear how long the contamination was present in the water, and at least one tenant, Brianne Curran, believes that she contracted Legionnaires two months before she was told that the estate had a contamination.
She says her landlord, the state-owned housing company Howoge, was much too slow to keep tenants informed of the dangers after water tests took place in March, and failed to implement containment measures until external pressure was applied.
Curran began experiencing flu-like symptoms in January and endured three weeks of coughing, breathing difficulties and lung pain before those symptoms subsided. However, she only tested for Legionnaire’s disease in late March, when she first became aware that her water had been contaminated. The doctor told her she had a “weak positive” result, before mentioning that there had been several other suspected cases of Legionnaire’s disease in the area.
Dangers in the water
It was only two weeks after that, on April 11, that Howoge informed her that the water supply in her apartment had by far the highest concentration of Legionella bacteria in the estate: Some 32,600 colony forming units (CFU) per 100 milliliters in her water (anything over 100 CFUs means the case has to be reported to authorities and measures need to be taken). Curran said she had to “fight” get the results of her own apartment, after being told that the individual results could not be displayed publicly.
In a statement to DW, Howoge spokesperson Sabine Pentrop played down the extent of the outbreak, saying that only seven apartments breached safety levels, and criticized the health authority for imposing such a wide-ranging shower ban.
The Neukölln health authority gave Howoge until April 16 to implement measures to contain the outbreak, which, according to Hannes Rehfeldt, the local councillor responsible for health in the district, said had been kept — the water had been reheated to sterilize it.
“Howoge always showed that it wanted to fulfill its responsibilities,” Rehfeldt told DW.
The extent of the shower ban, he added, had been necessary because so many households were dependent on the same water system. Rehfeldt underlined that it was safe to drink, wash and cook with the water, though even cold showers should be avoided unless using the special filters.
Curran feels that it was only after she took the case to the media, especially to Germany’s national public broadcaster ARD, that she began to get prompt responses to her emails to the company.
She says that she was not informed of her right to see her apartment’s test results for data protection reasons until she went to the tenants’ association — on the phone, a Howoge representative told her that she did not need to know her own test results.
“It was quicker to get the news onto national television than it was to get a response to my email from Howoge,” she told DW.
What measures were taken?
Legionella bacteria spread through water vapor, but not through drinking or person-to-person contact. Howoge advised residents of the High-Deck estate not to take showers and avoid breathing in steam from hot water and dishwashers. According to Curran, the shower ban was initially indefinite and was only shortened following media attention, when Howoge introduced a series of measures to contain the outbreak.
These included replacing the water fittings in apartments where the Legionella concentration was above 100 CFUs, and giving residents shower heads that filter out the bacteria. Howoge also offered residents a rent reduction for the period between imposing the shower ban and installing these filters.
On April 8, an external environmental consulting company named GUC was commissioned to investigate the cause of the outbreak, and according to Howoge is now producing a “catalogue of exact measures in order to permanently eliminate the Legionella contamination.” GUC suspected that the outbreak may have been caused by special fittings in the plumbing designed to prevent backflow of liquids into the system. These are now being removed, Howoge said.
“They are relying on outdated systems and dismally imagined protocols,” said Curran.
The prosaic problems of affordable housing
Howoge is one of the biggest landlords in Germany, owning more than 81,000 apartments in Berlin. It is also seeking to expand its stock to more than 100,000, but Curran is concerned that the company’s 1,200 staff doesn’t have the capacity to cope with the issues that are arising now.
The problem points to wider issues with affordable housing in major cities: In the past year alone, there have been Legionella outbreaks in New York, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Milan, Foshan, China, and Rzeszow, Poland, resulting in several deaths.
Though rents continue to rise in Berlin, tenants often feel that older buildings aren’t always maintained to modern standards, and many are often left frustrated by a lack of communication and action from landlords when things need to be fixed.
There are potential long-term fixes: Some European cities are beginning to introduce innovative ways to create modern affordable housing — like student houses made out of recycled shipping containers. And some cities are using technologies like water monitoring apps and smart water systems that are designed to prevent bacterial contamination.
“High Deck’s Legionella crisis shows the housing issues cities face worldwide,” Curran said. “Perhaps one way Howoge could show they are sorry to one of their main stake holders, namely, their tenants, is by opening their doors to developers/architects of such successful, affordable and sustainable housing projects, and rethink entirely their current plans of ‘housing solutions’ for the future of Berlin which obviously, to date, are failing.”
Edited by Rina Goldenberg
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