Further to the Randstad, there are more gaps in reception. In Utrecht, half of the 26 municipalities have not received any asylum seekers. There are also several adjacent municipalities in the north of North Holland that have not arranged shelter. This also applies to part of North Brabant. It should be noted that the province has made a significant contribution with the recent crisis shelter in Budel in the municipality of Cranendonck.
Rozendaal in Gelderland is one of the municipalities that has not received any asylum seekers in the past twelve years. Nevertheless, Mayor Ester Weststeijn (non-party) sincerely hopes that the Senate will adopt the dispersal law. “It is terrible what is happening there in Ter Apel. We also feel the social responsibility here to solve this together. When you see the emotion of the mayor of Westerwolde… That also affects us deeply.”
The question is why her municipality has not made a contribution. “You don’t want to be on this list. We would like to accommodate, but we are a municipality with only 1,750 inhabitants, without industrial estates or campsites around it. There is simply no room for this, no matter how much we would like to. If the dispersal law comes into effect For us, it only concerns six asylum seekers. That doesn’t make much difference. We do work together with ten municipalities in the Arnhem region. A lot of reception has been arranged there.”
The head of North Holland is also an area with many municipalities without reception facilities for asylum seekers. The municipality of Stede Broec is one of them. A spokesperson for that municipality says that there is no location available there for the reception of asylum seekers. To add: “Locations were offered to the COA at an earlier stage. However, these turned out not to meet their requirements at the time.”
It is striking that in almost all municipalities that do not receive refugees, there is room for Ukrainians. This also applies to Stede Broec and Rozendaal. Mayor Ester Weststeijn of that municipality: “That has to do with the fact that when we were receiving Ukrainians, we still thought it would be a very short period. When it came to receiving asylum seekers, it usually involved a longer period. With Ukrainians we have “We had to use a piece of private land for this. We thought it would be very temporary, but that turned out differently due to the continuation of the war.”