Reception locations for asylum seekers will become overloaded if municipalities are no longer allowed to give priority to status holders when assigning social rental properties. This is what the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) expects, writes The organization Friday on its website.
The COA is critical of a bill by Minister of Housing Mona Keijzer (BBB). She wants status holders no longer to be given priority when assigning a social rental home. With this, Keijzer hopes to illuminate the pressure on the housing market. According to the plan, status holders would end up on the same list as all other home seekers, who can increase a waiting list for up to seven years.
About 7 percent of the national social housing stock is assigned to status holders. Due to the new law, status holders would continue to move on from asylum seekers’ centers. As a result, people have to stay longer in the daycare and that more reception locations are needed, according to the COA. Currently, 70 percent of status holders – asylum seekers who have received a residence permit – have been in an emergency shelter for longer than the standard of fourteen weeks.
Warning for municipalities
COA director Joeri Kapteijns emphasizes that the asylum shelter system is already under great pressure and that this will become ‘even more unstable’ with the import of the bill. The minister responds to the ANP news agency on Friday that “a little more creativity” of the COA is expected in the housing of status holders. She states that the organization must look at solutions such as housing parts – something that the COA is already working on.
The Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) warned Municipalities on Monday for the ‘far -reaching risks’ of the bill. The government wants municipalities to provide flow locations themselves, so that status holders can leave the emergency shelter earlier. The VNG states that the minister has not carefully tested the financial and legal risks for municipalities and the organizational feasibility.
The bill also states that every municipality of the government receives 30,000 euros bonus by definitively housed status holder. According to the VNG, this money can be better spent on building social rental housing or the arrangement of the entire asylum chain.