Kältehilfe Berlin: What to Do When Someone Is Sleeping Out in the Cold
It is a cold evening in October and you are on your way home. Under the railway bridges on Yorckstraße, or in the entrance to the U-Bahn at Kottbusser Tor, someone is lying in a sleeping bag on the stone floor. You walk past, you think about it for the rest of the way, and at home you look up who you could have called. That is the night this guide is for.
Since 1 October the Berliner Kältehilfe has been running again, the city's winter network of emergency shelters, night cafés and outreach buses for people with nowhere to sleep. It runs until the end of April. Most of it is easy to use once you know which number answers at which hour, and that is the part almost nobody knows.
Breitenbachplatz on a January night. The Kältehilfe is at its fullest in weeks like this one.
What the Kältehilfe Berlin season is
The Kältehilfe Berlin started in 1989 as a joint effort of church parishes, welfare organisations and the Senate. Today it is a network of dozens of projects: emergency overnight shelters (Notübernachtungen), night cafés, soup kitchens and day centres, funded by the Senate, the districts and donations, and coordinated by the Koordinierungsstelle der Berliner Kältehilfe at GEBEWO pro.
The numbers for this winter come from the city's season notice of 30 September 2026:
About 670 places in October.
About 1,000 places in the cold months from November to March.
More than 90 per cent of the places were taken on average last winter, and about 96 per cent at the peak in January and February.
So the shelters are close to full on the nights that matter most. A place on the list is not automatically a free bed, which is why the phone lines below exist.
Ask first, then call the right number
The first move is the simplest one, and both the Kältehilfe and the Berliner Stadtmission ask for it: speak to the person politely and ask whether they need anything. Some people want a lift to a shelter. Some want a hot drink or a sleeping bag and to stay where they are. Some want to be left alone, and that is their decision.
If they do want help, these are the numbers the city lists for this season:
Kältehilfetelefon, 030 343 971 40: daily from October to April, 19:00 to 23:00. The Kältehilfe's own line, for the question of which shelter to try tonight.
Wärmebus of the Red Cross, 030 600 300 1010: daily from November to March, 18:00 to midnight. The bus drives out to the person you report.
Kältebus of the Berliner Stadtmission, 030 690 333 690: daily from November to March, 20:00 to 2:00. It brings people to a shelter, with hot tea and warm sleeping bags on board.
Obdachbus of DRK-Südwest, 0157 58 09 49 52: daily 11:00 to 22:00, but only in Steglitz-Zehlendorf.
Karuna Sub, 0157 866 050 80: a bus line for homeless people, Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 16:00.
Under the railway bridges on Yorckstraße, a sleeping place against one of the steel pillars.
When it is 112 and not a bus
If the person does not respond, seems confused, is lying in the cold without moving, or could be in danger, it is an emergency. Call 112 for the fire brigade and ambulance, or 110 for the police. The buses are not an ambulance service, and the Stadtmission asks callers to make sure the person actually wants their help before they send the Kältebus, because every wasted trip delays someone else. I would rather call 112 once too often than once too rarely on a night below zero.
October is the gap month
Here is the detail that surprises most people: the two buses only start on 1 November. In October, the season is already running but the only phone line is the Kältehilfetelefon, and it answers until 23:00. After that, it is the shelters themselves, or 112.
October nights in Berlin are usually above freezing, but a hard cold night can come in late October, before the buses are out. My advice: save the three numbers in your phone today, under a name you will find in the dark, such as "Kältebus" and "Kältehilfe".
The Landwehrkanal from the Rosa-Luxemburg-Steg in February 2025. From November to March the Kältebus and the Wärmebus are out every night.
Where the shelters are, night by night
The Kältehilfe publishes its list of emergency shelters month by month. The October list, published on 30 September, has 25 places across the city: eight shelters for everyone, seven for women, two for families with children, four for men, and four night cafés that open only on certain nights of the week. Some are open all year, most only from 1 October to 30 April, and a few night cafés start later in October.
The map below is built from that list. Pick a night and an hour, and it lights up the shelters that are open then, filtered by who they take. The strip underneath shows which phone line is answering at that hour.
A few things the map shows quickly:
Most shelters open between 17:00 and 20:00 and send people out between 7:00 and 9:00. Before 17:00, only a handful of places are open.
Women and families have their own places. The 24/7 shelter for women on Hallesches Ufer is open around the clock, and the two family shelters in Kreuzberg and Heiligensee only take adults with children.
Night cafés follow the calendar. The Mehringhof opens on Thursdays from 29 October, the Taborgemeinde on Tuesdays from 14 October.
From November the city adds more places, so the October list will grow. For tonight's picture, the Kältehilfe app for Android and iPhone lists every low-threshold service in the city and is updated as things change.
What to give, and where to take it
Many people want to give something practical, and a sleeping bag at the right moment can matter a lot. But shelters cannot use everything, and a car full of the wrong things costs volunteers an evening of sorting.
The Berliner Stadtmission's donation list is a good guide to what helps:
Clean, intact winter clothing: jackets, shoes, socks, underwear, hats, scarves and gloves.
New, unopened hygiene items: toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, razors, shower gel and period products.
Sleeping bags, fleece or wool blankets, sleeping mats and backpacks.
What they do not take: bedding, pillows, anything dirty or damaged, opened hygiene products, electronics, medicines, toys and furniture.
The Kurfürstendamm under snow on a January night in 2025. On a night like this, a sleeping mat is often worth more than a second jacket.
You can drop donations at the Stadtmission's Textilhafen at Storkower Straße 139 D in Prenzlauer Berg, Monday to Friday 9:00 to 16:00 and Saturday 10:00 to 15:00, up to five bags without an appointment. For anything bigger, or if you prefer to give money, the shelters and the Kältebus are funded partly by donations, and money lets them buy exactly what runs out first.
Giving time
The coordination office says plainly that many of the projects on the list could not run without volunteers. Night cafés, soup kitchens and shelters need people for evening shifts, cooking, and the early morning when guests leave. If you have one evening a month this winter, ask the Berliner Stadtmission or a shelter near you how they take on volunteers. October is the right time to ask, before the cold months.
My advice for this winter
The Kältehilfe works best when the person who notices also knows the next step. So keep it simple:
Save the numbers for the Kältehilfetelefon and the Kältebus now.
Ask before you call. The person decides.
Call 112 when someone does not respond.
Give what the shelters ask for, or give money.
Berlin's cold months are long, and the first snow usually brings the same questions every year: when the snow-clearing rules kick in, when your landlord has to switch on the heating under the heating season rules, where you can sit somewhere warm for free, like the public libraries. For someone sleeping outside, the question is only where tonight's bed is, and three numbers in your phone can answer it.
A residential street in Wilmersdorf after a snowfall in January 2025.
Image credits
Source and licence details for the photograph used in this article that needs a credit.
A sleeping place under the railway bridges on Yorckstraße at night: Christian Michelides, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.