It squeaks and it creaks in the shelter for Ukrainian refugees. Almost six months after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the moment when the shelter in the Netherlands is full is getting closer and closer.
It has been a bit of a mess at the shelter for Ukrainians for weeks. Every week, an average of 1,500 Ukrainian refugees arrive in the Netherlands, more than 200 people a day. Last week, more than 70,000 Ukrainians were registered in the Netherlands, of whom more than 55,000 were in municipal reception locations. And there it gradually fills up. Since the beginning of June, 90 percent of the available beds have been occupied. A peak was reached last week when the occupancy rate was 94 percent.
Municipalities are looking at the coming weeks with fear and trembling, according to a recently published inventory by the knowledge institute NIPV, the Netherlands Institute for Public Safety, which spoke to twenty mayors and those responsible at the security regions. “We can hardly handle an unexpected new wave of refugees,” writes the NIPV.
The government’s order to arrange 50,000 beds for Ukrainians has been fulfilled by municipalities. But on top of that, State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Justice and Security, VVD) made a request at the end of April to create another 25,000 emergency shelters. That number was far from being reached at the beginning of August. The ministry expects “in the coming weeks” to tap the 60,000. But municipalities and security regions wonder how many places they can still arrange.
Too few locations
Directors tell the NIPV that the “low hanging fruit” in terms of locations has already been picked. Now Ukrainians are mainly sheltered in obvious locations such as hotels, converted offices and on cruise ships. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable living spaces.
Moreover, the mutual solidarity between municipalities and regions is declining. “Not everyone delivers,” it sounds from the mouth of the interviewed directors. Municipalities ‘dive in’ and come up with the excuse that the city council, the college or the population does not want shelter. Or they say they organize structural reception, but it turns out that they can hardly arrange anything. There are also municipalities that do nothing at all – “that mostly sit still and never raise their finger”.
Asylum reception is unevenly distributed across the country
The administrators also fear that the support in society for the reception of Ukrainians is declining. More and more often they hear sounds such as ‘my child cannot find a place in that student city’ or ‘I have been waiting for years with my family for a suitable or affordable home’.
And that’s not all. 20,000 Ukrainians found shelter outside the municipal shelter for months, mostly with private individuals. That number has declined in recent weeks. In July this was about 2,000 Ukrainians less than a month earlier. “It is suspected that a large part of them has been moved from private shelter to municipal shelter,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice and Security.
The municipalities and security regions expect that many Ukrainians will not return. In fact, they take family reunification into account, which will lead to even more Ukrainians coming to the Netherlands.
We can hardly handle a new wave of refugees
Drivers against knowledge institute
The Ministry of Justice and Security also sees a lack of suitable locations and too few staff at municipalities. But the spokesperson emphasizes that they are committed to “accommodating any displaced person from Ukraine who comes forward under all circumstances”.
Three crises
In order to relieve the pressure on the reception, State Secretary Van der Burg took the decision at the end of July to ban people with a temporary Ukrainian residence permit – mostly students from the Middle East or Africa – from the Ukraine shelter. It was often impossible to check whether these so-called ‘third-country nationals’ actually had the correct papers, and this check was often done by municipal officials who were not trained for this.
Until now, about 5,500 third-country nationals are said to have been in municipal shelters, they are allowed to stay there. But from now on, only people with a Ukrainian passport can still be accommodated by municipalities, new third-country nationals must report to the application center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel.
COA saw this crisis coming for years
And with that, the pressure on the other emergency situation in the Netherlands is increasing: the asylum crisis. Thanks to European regulations, Ukrainians have a separate status, so that they do not have to apply for asylum. Moreover, they are allowed to work, travel freely and live wherever they want. This does not apply to asylum seekers from other countries.
Municipalities must also arrange reception places for these asylum seekers. That is not always possible, for weeks people spent the night outside the gate of the application center in Ter Apel. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA), which arranges reception for asylum seekers, is short of thousands of places. Moreover, a third of the asylum seekers’ centers are occupied by status holders – people who should already have their own house.
These 15,000 people are waiting for the municipalities. They have arranged too few places in recent years. The cabinet recently asked for an acceleration in housing status holders: 7,500 people in six weeks. That seems unfeasible, since many municipalities are lagging behind and the pressure on the housing market does not seem to be easing.
There seems to be no solution in the coming months for these three crises – the Ukraine reception, the asylum reception and the housing of status holders. In fact, the municipalities and security regions are taking into account new ‘significant numbers of refugees’. They are thinking of the 1.5 million Afghans who still reside in Turkey and Ukrainians who still flee to Europe in the winter.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 9, 2022
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