There are 256 homes in the park. Three migrant workers are allowed to live in the original six-person houses. In another part, the original four-person houses, two migrant workers can live. In total, there is room for 575 migrant workers at the park. “I have to be honest: not everything can be fixed up anymore,” says Knol. “But we are now refurbishing about two hundred homes for our target group.”
Knol works for the employment agency Uniepool and encounters resistance everywhere in his work. “That is a continuous problem. We have been around for almost twenty years and it is a continuous bottleneck. We can get the people, the customers are there, but housing those people is difficult. You run into problems everywhere. not in my backyard.”
The same is the case with the pipo village in Orange. After various ideas passed in review, the owners decided almost 1.5 years ago to focus on housing migrant workers. The plan is to have at least a hundred houses full by May. The rest will be realized after that time.
The municipality of Midden-Drenthe does not like the arrival of labor migrants. From the moment the first migrant workers entered the park in January 2022, the municipality has been carrying out checks. She also imposed an order subject to periodic penalty payments on the owners. Unjustified, the judge said. According to the zoning plan, the cottages, which are intended for recreation, may be used temporarily by people who have their main residence somewhere else. The case is still under appeal. The owners are not waiting for the verdict in the appeal with their expansion.
Too bad, Knol calls the situation. According to him, the municipality and the economy are very dependent on labor migrants. “We have a Jumbo distribution center here where many foreign people work and many farmlands where people collect the harvest from the land, so facilitate it now.”
An estimated 500 to 1,000 labor migrants work in Central Drenthe. The whereabouts of only 167 are known. That causes problems, the municipality said earlier. Some are placed by employers and temporary employment agencies, for example, in houses in the villages. This is contrary to the zoning plans and, according to the municipality, is not good for the neighbourhood.
Knol: “We can do a lot here. Soon we won’t have to buy houses in Smilde or Beilen to accommodate our people. It’s possible here.”
Nationally, efforts are being made to improve the living conditions of labor migrants. A lot of people live on the street or under poor conditions, according to Barka Foundation, an aid organization for homeless EU migrant workers, at the beginning of this year. However, attempts for improvements often encounter resistance from municipalities and the surrounding area.
The municipality of Midden-Drenthe is also working on new requirements for the accommodation of migrant workers. For the pipo village, the municipality maintains its position that the park is not suitable for housing migrant workers, but is intended for recreation. In a response, the municipality said it is awaiting the appeal.
Meanwhile, investment by entrepreneurs continues. The park already has almost a million euros and new houses are being renovated every day. There is also talk of the return of the supermarket to the park. So that tenants will soon be able to get food in the area. “Things are going fast. In the past three weeks we have rented out about 41 extra homes,” says Knol.
In addition to migrant workers, there are also some Ukrainian refugees living at the park. According to the owners, they can stay for the time being, although they have been asked to look for a new home in the long term. Knol would prefer not to have different target groups in the park.