A lady carefully inspects the boxes with insulation material. She grabs some LED lamps, radiator foil and draft strips, because that turns out to be necessary. “It’s very drafty with me, so every little bit helps,” she laughs. But she can’t laugh about it for long, because the rising prices are bothering her.
“I already work at the food bank myself, because I don’t have a lot of money. So it’s already quite difficult for me. And I see that more and more people are getting into problems because of the high energy prices. My daughter now also has to pay hundreds of euros. goes wrong.”
“I’m glad we can do this,” van Halteren continues. “But of course it is with a double feeling. You would prefer that as few people as possible use it. But it does say something about the times we live in. I think it’s good that people still come to us to pick up some stuff. It can be difficult because some people are embarrassed, for example.”
It is now the ninth session organized by Woonconcept. The organization has been to Hoogeveen, Meppel and Steenwijk (Overijssel). In total, 4500 to 5000 tenants have been helped, suspected of Halteren. “So a large group. We have never experienced anything like this. It has sometimes happened that the products were used up. Colleagues then had to quickly go to the hardware store to get some extras.”