State Secretary Eric van der Burg is busy looking for asylum seekers centers. Refugees who do not yet have a residence status live there. Brabant must provide 5,400 reception places before the end of the year. Southeast Brabant has to account for almost 3000 places, 900 of which are in Eindhoven. For Mayor Jeroen Dijsselbloem (PvdA) it is as clear as day: those places must be created, because the ‘dragging with people’ must be over.
This drag is due to the constant use of crisis-emergency care. In practice, this is often a sports hall where a few hundred people are temporarily accommodated. As chairman of the security region, Dijsselbloem is responsible for this. “We have declared the asylum reception a permanent crisis. As a result, the security regions always have to come up with an emergency solution. That is really no longer possible.”
Dijsselbloem is fierce about this. “These emergency locations are really emergency locations. There is nothing. You don’t want that for the people you have to take care of, but also not for the environment. It is decided on the spur of the moment that a hall will be furnished, without participation because it is an emergency situation. That is disastrous for the support base.”
“This is not a crisis situation, but an ongoing issue.”
He does not hide his opinion. In mid-March, he angered State Secretary Van der Burg by announcing that he no longer wants emergency shelters in Eindhoven.
The system freezes completely. Due to the lack of houses, refugees with a residence permit cannot move on from the asylum seekers’ center (azc). Then there is no room for new refugees in that azc and then emergency shelter and crisis emergency shelter are needed. Van der Burg is also at a loss.
Mayor Dijsselbloem: “We are always causing unrest and we have to get rid of that. The resistance of local residents is in this temporary shelter. Because it’s a crisis, the mayor can decide, but you’re sidelining citizens. This is not a crisis situation, but an enduring issue: a new reality.”
That is why Southeast Brabant is now looking hard for 3000 permanent places. “The problem is that it takes time. We have to designate places and then the procedure of informing, participating, changing the zoning plan and granting a permit follows. Until that is done, crisis emergency shelter is needed. But eventually that has to stop.”
“If we have to settle all this one by one, we have a bad story.”
Dijsselbloem also hopes that a decision will be made soon about Van der Burg’s dispersion law. This law should be able to oblige municipalities to provide permanent shelter for people. Now municipalities are only obliged to find houses for people with a residence status.
The Eindhoven mayor has made agreements with his colleagues in the region to tackle this together. “If we have to arrange this all one by one, we have a bad story. We have to do this together. Because I am convinced that if you ask the residents of your municipality whether we should do something to prevent people in Ter Apel from sleep in the grass, the answer is a resounding yes.”
“The process is hard enough as it is.”
Dijsselbloem also knows that it won’t be easy to find all those places. That is why it is very important that agreements are made that you can rely on.
“The process is hard enough as it is. I cannot ask the city council to agree to 900 places if it becomes 1100 two months later.” And therein lies the problem. “In any case, the cabinet will have to discuss how many people we can accommodate. There is a limit to what you can ask of municipalities.”