Schouten wants ‘as much as possible’ to have one counter for government collection. In this way she wants to prevent people with debts from losing overview in the forest of repayments. By bundling all debts, citizens will have to deal with only one bailiff with whom they can conclude one payment arrangement. In addition, Schouten is aiming for more restructuring loans, whereby the municipality takes over someone’s debts and becomes the sole ‘creditor’ itself. It should also be possible to pause a debt.
Schouten writes this in her action plan for poverty and debt. She wants to halve the number of children growing up in poverty by 2025 and the number of people in poverty and households with problematic debts by 2030, compared to 2015. According to her, these are ‘ambitious’ goals, but are especially needed now that the high more people are chasing a lot of money.
Schouten is also thinking of non-financial measures. For example, she wants to ensure that people with an income around the social minimum have better access to (oral) care and more money goes to language education for children and adults.
