The shortage of shelter places threatens to become so great that the COA can no longer provide asylum seekers with shelter. This is what the COA says after questions from NRC. In scenarios that the shelter organization takes into account, for example, only vulnerable people could be admitted to the Ter Apel registration center, and others would have to sleep outside again. “Then you no longer fulfill your legal duties for care and guidance,” acknowledges a COA spokesperson.
The warning comes while the shortage of shelter places remains severe despite new emergency measures. Forty asylum seeker centers are expected to close in the next three months, according to COA. This equates to 4,100 places. The reception agency does not say which locations are involved, because it is still negotiating with the municipalities to keep the locations open.
COA says it is doing everything it can to prevent people from having to spend the night outside. The organization cannot estimate when the shortage will actually become too large.
At the end of March, Minister Bart van den Brink (Asylum and Migration, CDA) called on municipalities in a letter to step in and find temporary shelters as quickly as possible. That call was heeded, but in the meantime many other locations closed their doors and new asylum seekers came to the Netherlands.
A total of 3,860 additional places were created after Van den Brink’s call. A third by adding beds at existing locations and expanding locations. And a thousand ’emergency shelters’ were added: places of a very temporary nature, such as an event hall in Breda for three months (April, July and August), a church in Leiden and hotels. There are also 240 status holders traveling to the Netherlands who are staying in hotels.
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Long struggle
COA has been struggling with finding shelters for some time. For example, for years it relied on the online registration form on its own website where property owners can offer potential shelter locations. A few years ago, the government asked the King’s commissioners for help in finding places, but that also yielded little.
Due to the lack of places, COA is increasingly moving to hotels, while the organization would actually prefer not to accommodate asylum seekers here. In total, a quarter of the locations consist of hotels, with an average of approximately 145 places per hotel. Shelter in emergency shelters, such as hotels, costs “two to three times as much” as shelter in a regular shelter.
The occupancy rate has risen to 104 percent, “never so high before”
In recent years, COA has maintained an occupancy rate of 96 percent. This means that there are still a few beds available for emergencies. But because the need is currently so great, this percentage has now risen to 104 percent. “This has never been this high before,” says a COA spokesperson.” The addition of extra beds at asylum seekers’ centers was not always done in consultation with the municipalities, the COA acknowledges.
Increasingly fierce protests
The search for new shelters is made even more difficult by the increasingly fierce protests against asylum seeker centers. In Loosdrecht there were five demonstrations in recent weeks against the arrival of an asylum seekers’ center. The police were pelted with heavy fireworks, full cans of soda and eggs. The riot police had to be involved several times. In IJsselstein, Utrecht, the windows of the town hall were smashed with bricks after it became known that a temporary shelter for 100 to 150 asylum seekers would be built on a football field.
Shortly after the protest in Loosdrecht, the number of asylum seekers to be received, mainly single men, was reduced from 110 to 70. The opening of the asylum center was also postponed for a number of weeks and is scheduled for next week. Mayor Mark Verheij said against NRC that he did so after “conversations with residents”. He had not succumbed to violence: “If I were to bow to the resistance groups I would withdraw the entire reception plans, but I will not do that.” The mayor of IJsselstein has said that he will continue to implement the asylum plans despite the resistance.