Germany struggles to find housing for more than a million refugees

The German government has pledged to provide more support to cities and towns struggling to house the more than 1.1 million refugees and migrants who have arrived in the country this year, mostly from war-torn Ukraine but also other countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.

After meeting with State and local officials, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said while the government already allocated federal real estate for tens of thousands of refugees earlier this year, it would immediately provide additional property for about 4,000 refugees to ease the current housing crisis.

Ms Faeser also promised financial support but did not give any concrete figures.

Several cities have recently started putting up tents and turned convention centres into temporary accommodations as regular migrant centres have become overcrowded.

"I don't want to downplay this, we have a tense situation," Ms Faeser told reporters in Berlin.

"That's why we discussed today how to best coordinate our assistance to refugees... also in view of the winter months that lie ahead."

More than one million people have entered Germany from Ukraine since Russia attacked the eastern European country on February 24.

About a third of them are children and teenagers, and more than 70 per cent of the adults are women.

"It's a big humanitarian effort to take good care of the refugees from Ukraine, to provide shelters, to provide daycare centres and schools for the children and to give them social support," the minister said.

She added that Germany was expecting more refugees from Ukraine as Russia escalates its brutal attacks on Ukraine and people there may be struggling even more to survive during the cold winter months.