On Tuesday evening, August 16, Maria Olde Heuvel heard from her neighbor that ‘her’ hotel in Albergen, which she sold to the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA), would become an asylum seekers’ center for three hundred people. “When I heard the number three hundred, I completely blocked,” she tells the judge halfway through the session in Almelo on Monday. She raises her hands in the air: “If I had known that, I would never have sold the hotel!”
Olde Heuvel annulled the purchase contract. The COA then instituted summary proceedings. Olde Heuvel, she says, was not at all well informed about the number of asylum seekers and invokes “deception” and “misguidance”.
The courtroom is packed with people from Albergen. Olde Heuvels hotel has been the center of – negative – attention for almost two weeks now. State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum, VVD) announced in mid-August that the hotel in Albergen will be an asylum seekers’ center. The municipality of Tubbergen – where Albergen is located – felt overtaken by that decision. About 150 to 200 people will live in the hotel, and another 100 people will be accommodated in units around the site. It is the first municipality where Van der Burg enforces such a decision.
Resistance
That decision immediately aroused enormous resistance. Angry local residents screwed signs with texts like ‘Mary thanks’ to the hotel, protests were held in front of the door for days. Olde Heuvel knew that an asylum seekers’ center could be sensitive in the area, as it turns out. When the COA came for a technical inspection, Olde Heuvel asked “if they would like to keep that quiet”, to prevent unrest. She thought her fellow villagers could get used to about 80 asylum seekers, she says, based on the 74 hotel guests who can sleep there at the moment.
Lawyer De Jonge of the COA calls Olde Heuvel a ‘regrettable’. Someone who was so shocked by the reactions of her environment that she wanted to undo the sale under pressure. In April, Olde Heuvels broker praised the hotel at the COA as the ‘ideal reception location’, says lawyer De Jonge. In June, COA sent the broker an email in which 200 residents are mentioned. And when the hotel was inspected in April, two COA employees talked about 150 to 200 asylum seekers, including Olde Heuvel.
“Has that been said to me?” says Olde Heuvel. “Have you heard that comment?” the judge later asks Olde Heuvel. She shakes her head. “I can’t remember.”
De Jonge finds it difficult to place that Olde Heuvels broker stipulated that nothing was included in the purchase contract about the use of the hotel: “That is precisely your political struggle, your risk,” he writes in an email to COA.
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Drop
And then there is the situation in Ter Apel, which justifies this quick procedure, says De Jonge. There are still hundreds of asylum seekers sleeping outside. “Every bed counts,” he insists. “The hotel is a drop in the ocean, but it is a drop.”
Olde Heuvels lawyer thinks summary proceedings are just not suitable for this case, he begins his plea. The crisis in Ter Apel “cannot be a reason to override the appeal on the merits”. He argues that Olde Heuvel could also not always know what her broker was saying.
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The judge sees that differently. “The COA has played an open card,” says the judge, “and can assume that Olde Heuvel knew what her broker was doing,” he says. “Nowhere” in the evidence did he read that specific numbers of asylum seekers determined sales. “She hasn’t even said that to her own real estate agent.” The sale must therefore go ahead. The judge imposes a penalty of 50,000 euros per day, with a maximum of 1 million euros.
After his verdict, the judge addresses a visibly distressed Olde Heuvel. “I understand very well that you are shocked by everything that has arisen,” he says. “You could not have known what would happen between the municipality and the Secretary of State, and what all this would mean for your position in your community. But you can’t be blamed.”