ANPThe NH Hotel in Kijkduin where asylum seekers can be accommodated due to the emergency at the registration center in Ter Apel. ANP PHIL NIJHUIS
NOS News•today, 5:18 PM•Adjusted today, 5:24 PM
Rollinde Hoorntje
Domestic Editor
Rollinde Hoorntje
Domestic Editor
Directors of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) will themselves call 45 municipalities that do little or nothing about housing status holders and asylum reception. The COA writes this in a message on the site. Formally, the housing of status holders (asylum seekers with a residence permit) is a legal task of municipalities, and provinces supervise this.
But now the Ministry of Justice and COA are going to intervene themselves. Municipalities that do less than 30 percent of what they should can expect a call from COA directors and from officials or ministers from the Ministries of Justice and Security and Home Affairs.
If a municipality cannot find housing, asylum seekers will be accommodated in a hotel or temporary accommodation, either in the locality itself or in a neighboring municipality, writes the COA in an explanation of the measure.
The costs thereof will be borne by the COA. The amount is not yet known.
21,000 status holders in reception by 2025
If municipalities do not start accommodating people more quickly, in more than a year there will be 21,000 status holders in shelters, the Ministry of Justice wrote. last month. Now there are almost 16,000. The rapid growth in the number of status holders in shelters is due to the fact that the flow of status holders to housing is stalling: there are simply too few of them.
Overcrowded Ter Apel
They also notice this in Ter Apel. For weeks, many more people have been sleeping in the registration center there than the permitted number of 2,000. This weekend, 2,500 people stayed overnight, partly in the waiting area of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and on chairs, says a COA spokesperson. On Sunday, a group of a hundred asylum seekers were urgently transferred to a hotel in Kijkduin to prevent people from having to sleep outside.
The shortage of reception places is not so much due to the increase in the number of asylum applications, the COA wrote earlier. A bigger problem is that people often stay in asylum reception facilities for too long. Almost half of the people in shelters live in a temporary location that often closes again after a few months. After that, alternative locations must be found again.
Long waiting time IND
The flow is also halted because the IND does not process applications on time. The waiting time for a decision on an asylum application has increased to one year. In February that was still 23 weeks. The backlog has now increased up to 68,000 cases (including applications for travel in connection with family reunification). The result is that people waiting for a decision will hold a place in the shelter longer, she said the COA earlier.
An additional problem is that the police capacity in Ter Apel is insufficient to register all people who apply for asylum and determine their identity. As a result, the queue there has increased to 1,500 people, the police confirm.
500 additional status holders
The law requires that people who have received a residence permit must be housed within 14 days, but due to the lack of housing, this takes much longer.
Of the 16,000 status holders in reception, 10,000 have already been waiting longer than the prescribed period, writes the COA. On average, 8 percent of social housing goes to status holders, the NOS recently calculated.
The COA’s plans should ensure that status holders can leave asylum reception more quickly. In the coming months, other municipalities that are lagging behind in providing housing will be selected.
The goal is to have an additional 500 status holders leave every week, twice as many as now.
2023-11-27 16:18:23
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