interview
Is the asylum reception heading towards a code black? The next three weeks will determine the course of the asylum summer. The boss of the COA shelter organization is concerned. Joeri Kapteijns will be short of eight thousand shelter places at the end of the summer. “If those places are not created, we will have a complicated summer.”
Joeri Kapteijns spoke to an alderman on the phone this Wednesday morning. The interim chairman of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) wanted to open an emergency shelter in a hotel – ‘I will not mention the name of the municipality’. The answer: “He was not prepared to do that.”
Kapteijns often hears ‘No’. He’s been looking for months extra beds for asylum seekers. Not because the influx is now very high, but because people stay in reception longer due to long procedures at the IND immigration service and too few homes, as is also evident from the annual report that the COA presented on Thursday.
Although ‘quite a few places’ were added, the bottom line is ‘insufficient’. “Before the summer – so in three weeks – we will be short of three thousand places. At the end of the summer there will be eight thousand. That is what we see coming our way.”
Will it be possible to find those places?
“I hope so. If those places don’t become available, we will get stuck and face a complicated summer. We need large locations that we can deploy very quickly.”
Asylum Minister Bart van den Brink looks at vacant government buildings or tent camps on the basis of the government. Is that the solution?
“The problem is: every land in the Netherlands is in a municipality. Ultimately, we always need it. Let me be clear: there is no shortage of places. There are so many office buildings in the Netherlands that have been empty, sometimes for ten years or more. In those places we can provide reception for asylum seekers in a good way, but also housing for other people. So there is no shortage of places, there is a lack of will to realize them.”
There is no shortage of places, there is a lack of will to realize them
Has political will suffered as a result of the recent asylum protests?
“Managers are often willing to do so. But you notice that some municipal councils and residents are against it. So far this year we have closed 33 locations and opened 39. You have like Loosdrecht heard and maybe four or five other places. You don’t know the other one. They just open without any problems. Once a location is there, resistance disappears quite quickly. In fact, as soon as the shouters disappear, the volunteers come. They always come later, because they do not dare to make their voices heard at first. And then it is often heart-warming how much support we receive. You hear that much less in the news, but it is also the reality.”
When Kapteijns started at COA in 2019, he had a goal: that municipalities would call him to ask whether COA would please open an asylum seeker center (azc) there. That didn’t work and, he now acknowledges, may never work. “But what I meant by it: we also have something to bring.”
“Sometimes facilities, a school or a sports area, which people from outside the asylum center can also use. The bus that can continue to drive or a national monument that we can preserve for society after renovation. And: we can realize homes very well. In Eindhoven we are one with a housing association old tax office is transforming: part will become asylum seekers’ center and part will become rental property. Without us this would never have happened. We also take money with us.”
But you now have acute problems. In Ter Apel it is so full that only vulnerable asylum seekers are allowed to enter the registration center. Why?
“It was really no longer possible. There can be two thousand people in Ter Apel, and we were well above that for quite some time. We now have a door policy: children, pregnant women and the sick are allowed to enter anyway. It is a major decision that we have postponed for as long as possible by receiving as many people as possible. The occupancy rate in our asylum seekers’ centers is therefore 104 percent.”
It is often said: there could be another bed.
“We have done that recently. Normally we have the option of leaving one bed available in a five-person room with a family of four people. Well, we’ve been past that situation for a very long time. A woman traveling alone is now placed on that bed. There are locations where we have placed beds in the recreation room. Such a recreation room may sound luxurious, but people have a very small room and sometimes they literally need some space. If that is no longer possible, then it will become very inhumane.”
The COA also accommodates 19,000 status holders, while that is a task for municipalities.
“The COA is the backstop for municipalities that cannot provide housing in a timely manner. That has actually gotten out of hand, resulting in people with a residence permit occupying many places that we need for asylum seekers. That is simply not okay.”
We are short of 300,000 homes in the Netherlands, for which you can hardly blame the 19,000 people who are waiting with us
Where should they go then?
“I understand that there are problems in the housing market. People often point to asylum seekers. But we are short of 300,000 homes in the Netherlands, and you can hardly blame the 19,000 people who are waiting with us. ”
“For the sake of image, it may be that people were lying on the grass then, now again and that it was quiet in the meantime. Of course that is not the case. We have been under pressure for years. So it’s not a movie, but more of a series.”
Another new season?
“Yes, or a repetition. While that was not necessary at all. The solutions have been known for a long time and are feasible: sufficient shelter places with stable financing. But in recent years that has come to a standstill. It is sad to see that.”
Was that because of the previous government?
“The dispersal law was adopted in 2024 and then a cabinet came in that said: we are going to withdraw it. The offers from municipalities to open asylum seekers’ centers immediately dried up. Now that there is clarity the distribution law is and will remainit picks up again.”
Because Kapteijns sees a bright spot: the distribution law works. That councilor who refused emergency shelter this morning also said something else. “He would like to talk about structural shelter. Until now, this had not been discussed with the municipality. Now it does.”
It will take years before a new asylum center can open. You need places now.
“I also said that to that councilor: that today I literally have people lying on the grass in Ter Apel. And I need room for that too. We do not have the luxury of every municipality saying: well, we are going to work on stable shelter and then I don’t have to provide emergency shelter. No, both are necessary.”
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