Asylum crisis is far from resolved, COA figures show

The asylum crisis will not be resolved before the end of this year. On Jan. 1, 2023, there is likely to be a shortage of at least 10,000 reception places for asylum seekers. This is apparent from confidential documents from the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) in the hands of RTL Nieuws and which the ANP has also seen.

Municipalities must have 51,000 places available for the COA by the end of this year, as was agreed between the Cabinet and municipalities in the asylum deal at the end of August. The documents from the COA show that those numbers are not being achieved. Crisis emergency care will therefore continue to be necessary in 2023.

One of the problems is the shortage of emergency shelters. Many of those locations are temporary. At the beginning of October there were still 53,000 emergency shelter spots, but that will drop sharply to 45,800 places on Jan. 1. The COA expects to need 56,200 places on that date, RTL reports.

The situation can change if municipalities help many status holders to find a home in a short period of time. In the aforementioned asylum deal, it was agreed that municipalities will do everything they can to accommodate 20,000 status holders before the end of this year. These former asylum seekers have a residence permit and are allowed to stay in the Netherlands. Because of the housing shortage, among other things, more than 17,000 of them are forced to stay in an asylum seekers center (azc). Partly because of this, and the arrival of many new asylum seekers, there has been a major shortage of reception places in the asylum seekers' centers for months.

The COA is also hard-headed on this point. Since July 1, a total of 7,730 permit holders have been given housing in a municipality, according to figures from the COA. "At the rate of outflow since July 1, the outflow of 20,000 permit holders is far away," the COA writes.

State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum Affairs) also sees that the accelerated housing of 20,000 permit holders by municipalities is lagging behind schedule, he wrote to the Tweede Kamer on Friday. The 11,250 crisis emergency shelters promised by municipalities and security regions do not exist either; the number remains at just over 7,000. In the application center in Ter Apel, which has been overloaded for months, there are still more than 2,000 asylum seekers. "That is still more than allow agreements with the municipality of Westerwolde," writes Van der Burg.

The State Secretary is working on a "distribution law" that will force all municipalities to accept asylum seekers, although his own party is strongly against this. A compromise is now in the works, whereby municipalities receive a bonus if they voluntarily accept asylum seekers. The negotiations are not only politically sensitive, but are also felt under great time pressure: Van der Burg wants the law to come into effect on Jan. 1.

About the confidential documents, the Council for Refugees says in a response that they "emphasize the necessity that something has to change urgently," according to a spokesperson. "People are already waiting in the rain every day at the registration center in Ter Apel. The situation is already critical and it will only become more critical." The organization believes that the Cabinet should soon come up with the distribution law, "which has been waiting for weeks."