The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) expects that eight hundred new emergency shelters will be added in the coming months. That is considerably less than the 2,600 places that the reception organization had asked last month at eight different provinces.
Gelderland, Limburg, Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht, Zeeland and Zuid-Holland were written by the COA in July because they did not meet the number of places that they should offer, according to the distribution regulated via the Spreading Act.
Due to the “usual summer peak in the daycare”, the COA urgently asked the eight provinces to realize 325 extra emergency shelters per province. There is therefore no visibility at 1,800 of those 2,600 places.
“The occupation at our regular and emergency reception locations is maximum, the numbers in Ter Apel are not allowed to exceed the 2000 and the extension of status holders to homes is still going well as a result of the shortage on the housing market,” a spokesperson for the COA told in writing NRC. “At the moment we can still offer everyone a bed. The structurally high occupation of our (emergency shelter) locations does lead to tensions and unrest.”
The COA calls “stable financing” and the Spreading Act, which wants to abolish the outgoing cabinet, “crucial to create more reception places in a sustainable way and thus reduce the system.”
Read also
Advisory councils: Asylum shelter can be better and 1 billion cheaper