The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) expects that another 150 people will have to sleep outside this night at the application center in Ter Apel. According to a spokeswoman for the COA, there are canopies that can provide shelter against the rain and severe weather is not expected immediately.
According to the spokeswoman, it was still very busy at the registration center at the end of the afternoon. A number of people have been transferred to the crisis emergency shelter in Stadskanaal.
It is the third night in a row that people are sleeping outside at the registration center. In the night from Sunday to Monday, about 150 people were involved. From Saturday to Sunday, 200 to 250 asylum seekers spent the night outside.
A group of entrepreneurs from the province of Groningen distributed about two hundred tents at the registration center on Monday evening. Initiator Willem Straat wants to send out a signal: “People should not sleep outside. We do not interfere with politics, but we believe that you cannot do this.”
The money for the tents was raised through a crowdfunding campaign. According to Straat, these are pop-up tents. “You throw them in the air and they stand,” he explains. “And you can fold them up again and take them with you like a kind of handbag.” The tents are allowed to keep the refugees. The initiators have included a note asking who no longer needs the tent, to pass it on to someone else.
People sleep outside at Ter Apel because it has been too full at the Groningen application center for months. This is due to the halted flow of asylum seekers. Asylum seekers’ centers no longer have a place and status holders cannot move on to a house due to, among other things, the overheated housing market.