If you look at an aerial photo of Almere, it seems difficult to get lost in this paragon of spatial planning. The city is less than fifty years old and is neatly divided into approximately equal sized sections with the same pattern. Yet many inhabitants of all places lost their way here, but in a subsidy system set up by the government: more than 2,500 of the almost 200,000 inhabitants of Almere have reported as victims of the Allowance Affair. Percentage more than in other municipalities.
The approach to the problems in Almere is regularly mentioned by members of the House of Representatives as an example of how to properly handle the allowances affair as a municipality. Almere has an alderman, Froukje de Jonge (CDA, social domain), who, in his own words, “works outside the rules” in solving the problems. Victims are allowed to participate in decision-making about solutions in a recently established ‘College of Recovery Experts’. In this way Almere tries to restore the damaged trust of citizens in the government.
The Allowance affair initially seemed to be a problem that had to be solved by the national government: the Tax and Customs Administration had wrongly classified a large number of parents as fraudsters and the cabinet had to compensate financially. But it soon became apparent that municipalities also have a task. Victims were, for example, evicted from their home due to their debts, lost their job or saw their children removed from their home. Former State Secretary for Finance Alexandra van Huffelen (D66) made 11 million euros available to municipalities to help victims solve these kinds of problems.
Recovery Experts
In her spacious, modern office in the town hall, De Jonge is seated at a wooden, round table with two victims from Almere next to her: Rachelle (40) and Samantha (42). Together with two other benefit parents, they form the recovery experts. They don’t want to enter their last name NRC and prefer not to tell how the Allowances affair has affected them themselves. The two parents know each other through a local support group of benefit parents, KOT Almere. “At the beginning of last year, we started pulling very hard on the alderman,” says Rachelle. “We wanted to have a say in our own recovery.”
It was the first time in the whole benefits scandal that I felt real recognition
Rachelle victim
The two say that a few speeches by De Jonge in the city council were important for restoring their confidence. “She said not only that she made mistakes, she also said that as the cause of a problem you cannot come up with the solution,” says Rachelle. Samantha: „You saw that she had been hit. That’s how I knew she meant what she said.” Rachelle: “It was the first time in the whole benefits scandal that I really felt recognition.”
The alderman says that she realized that the consequences of the Allowances affair cannot “be solved with the applicable rules”. An important part of this was a report by De Zolderkamer, a national collective of benefit victims, which is committed to more participation. The recovery experts helped set up the collective. De Jonge: “What happened in the Allowance scandal is not normal. That’s why I thought: we have to work outside the rules.”
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Waiting 8 years for a rental home
De Jonge did the latter, each time with the permission of the municipal council. For example, she agreed with housing associations that benefit victims will be given ‘absolute’ priority in housing. They do not have to wait – in Almere the waiting time for social housing is on average 8 years, according to a survey by the NOS last year. When allocating a home, the preference for, for example, neighborhood and number of bedrooms is honored.
And she made sure that victims can always claim special money pots for people who live below the poverty line, even if they actually earn just a little too much.
At the initiative of the College of Recovery Experts, a place will soon be opened in the city for benefit victims. From then on, the conversations between the municipality and the victims will take place. Rachelle: „In the town hall you are at the home base of the civil servants. We want the officials to come to us.”
When asked whether the recovery experts will also decide what the municipality should do with the money that the government makes available for benefit victims, De Jonge initially reacts hesitantly. “It’s meant to be, but something has happened that Rachelle and Samantha don’t know about yet and I doubt now is the right time to say it.” De Jonge decides to tell it anyway, because she thinks it is a good example of how ‘the system’ does not always produce the best solution. “A budget proposal has already been made by officials for the budget,” says De Jonge. “They came up with a neat official proposal that they had been working on for three months. But of course I asked, “Have our recovery experts seen this yet?” “No,” they replied, “we want to put it to them.”
“But the proposal was already written,” Rachelle says.
De Jonge: “Yes, so I have brushed the whole proposal off the table.”
Rachelle and Samantha say nothing, but look less tense.
De Jonge: “This is a striking example: civil servants want to do the right thing, but the outcome is not the right thing. We still have a lot to learn.”