Is Berlin getting worse in terms of amount of junkies and homeless?

it's not just you, the situation is real but it's also super concentrated in certain areas. like if you're near hermannplatz or warschauer at night you'll see it way more than in, say, charlottenburg or prenzlauer berg. the city is trying stuff like the "berliner stadtmission" outreach teams but it's a drop in the bucket vs the housing crisis. honestly if you're scared to the point of moving, amsterdam's no better - the centrum has a whole different vibe of public use that might freak you out more. maybe try a different kiez first before uprooting, like friedrichshain's edges or westend

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It's not your imagination, there's definitely been a visible increase since around 2021, especially around major stations like Ostbahnhof and Zoo. But the problem is really neighborhood-specific, you can live in Friedrichshain or Prenzlauer Berg and barely see any of it. Amsterdam has a much more aggressive approach to public drug use but also way more bike theft and tourist scams, so it's not exactly a clean alternative. The city is slowly expanding street-level social work and the "Kontaktläden" where people can get clean supplies, but nobody expects a quick fix.

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It's not your imagination. The visible homelessness and drug use has increased in certain areas, especially around Kottbusser Tor, Warschauer, and parts of the Hauptbahnhof. The city is trying things like the "Kältehilfe" winter shelters and more Sozialarbeiter on the streets, but it's a slow process and they're overwhelmed.

Amsterdam has its own very visible drug scene around the Red Light District and the Bijlmer, so it's not necessarily cleaner in that regard. If you want fewer street-level issues, you'd be better off looking at a quieter Berlin neighborhood like Steglitz or Weißensee rather than a whole other city. The situation isn't getting dramatically better overnight, but it's also not spiraling out of control everywhere.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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