In an effort to fight the asylum crisis, the Dutch cabinet is cooking up a plan to make 20,000 houses available for asylum seekers and offer €730 million to advocacy projects.
The Netherlands has been struggling with an overflow of asylum seekers for weeks, and the lack of housing has left many shelters and centres crammed.
In particular, the aslyum crisis has been ever-growing at the registration centre in Ter Apel, where asylum seekers can be seen sleeping outside in tents and chairs.
The situation deteriorated so much that the international aid organization, Doctors Without Borders, intervened and provided care for those staying outside of the centre’s gates.
What’s the cabinet’s solution?
To combat this, the government and municipalities are trying to find new ways to reduce the influx of asylum seekers, writes the NOS.
Cabinet officials are looking at measures such as by temporarily limiting the options for family reunification.
To further reduce pressure on the asylum seeker centres, the cabinet is going to ask municipalities to provide up to 20,000 temporary homes for asylum seekers with residence permits by autumn of this year, according to RTL Nieuws.
This is, of course, going to be quite challenging for the municipalities as nearly all of the Netherlands is suffering from a serious housing shortage, and especially social rentals, which are under control of the municipalities, are extremely limited in Dutch cities.
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In the coming years, they also plan to supply €730 million to create new opportunities for emergency shelters, flexible housing, integration, and tackling nuisances.
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