In our province, more and more Ukrainians who fled the war in their homeland are being taken care of. More and more places are also being made available, now more than five thousand. Municipalities therefore have their hands full arranging reception places. In Den Bosch, some civil servants get to work less because they roll up their sleeves at reception places.
There are currently 5402 places available for refugee Ukrainians throughout Brabant. Not all places are being used yet: 81.2 percent are currently occupied.
The occupancy rate is virtually the same in all three Safety Regions:
- 1969 people are accommodated in the Central and West Brabant Security Region, 86 percent of the places are occupied.
- 1192 people are accommodated in the Brabant-Zuidoost Safety Region, which means that 79 percent of the places are occupied.
- In the Brabant-North Safety Region, 1,227 people are accommodated, which means that 76.4 percent of the places are occupied.
Previously big differences
The number of available places and the number of Ukrainians looking for a shelter has increased in our province last month. For example, there were still 3,531 places available at the beginning of April, now there are almost two thousand more.
Two weeks ago it became clear that the Security Regions had to arrange extra reception places. In Brabant-Zuidoost, for example, a maximum of a thousand extra places were involved. These are in addition to the two thousand reception places that the Security Region expects to have ready at the beginning of June.
At the beginning of last month, there were also major differences between the three Security Regions. In the southeast of our province, for example, a quarter of the places were filled, while in Central and West Brabant almost all places were filled. The Security Regions did not know why these differences were so great.
Municipalities have their hands full
The NOS has done research to the experiences of municipalities with refugee reception. This showed that municipalities have their hands full with the reception of almost sixty thousand Ukrainian refugees who are now staying in the Netherlands. For example, eight out of ten participating municipalities report that the pressure on the municipality has increased.
The biggest challenge for municipalities was that after the start of the war they had to find and organize reception locations in great haste. Staff, such as housing counselors and caretakers, also had to be found quickly.
Bossche officials do not get to work
In Den Bosch, municipal employees therefore assist in all sorts of ways. There are currently 45 civil servants working full-time on the reception. That will become even more as the number of shelters increases. The officials help, for example, with cleaning toilets or unpacking and laying mattresses. “At such a moment, this municipality really feels like a wonderful organization, with flexible and motivated people,” official Huub Corssmit told the NOS.
The only drawback is that the civil servants have little or no time for other matters as a result. For example, employees who normally spend a significant part of their working time on shelters for the homeless or troubled youth, now have little or no time for this. Despite this, support for the reception of Ukrainians remains strong.
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