Hardly any homes available for single refugees

There are hardly any homes available for single refugees in the Netherlands, and most of the refugees stuck in asylum centers while they wait for housing are single people. The stock of social housing does not at all meet the needs of refugees—asylum seekers who have been granted asylum and a residency permit for the Netherlands, NOS reports based on figures from the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA).

The central government determines every six months how many refugees municipalities must accommodate. Currently, that is just over 25,000 people spread over the Dutch municipalities. As of July 1, almost 11,000 of them were still living in asylum centers, waiting for a home. That is due to the housing shortage and the fact that the available homes don’t meet the need.

85 percent of the waiting refugees are single persons, although many of them are waiting for their families to join them. At the same time, only 9 percent of social housing available to the COA is 50 square meters or smaller and, therefore, suitable for a single-person household.

Given the massive housing shortage in the Netherlands, municipalities prefer not to allocate family homes to single refugees. But they also don’t want to allocate single-person homes if the refugee will only have to move again when their family joins them. “To prevent relocation movements, municipalities and housing associations prefer to place these families immediately in a multi-person home. Partly because the number of single-person homes is scarce,” a spokesperson for the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) told NOS.

The COA analysis showed that there is a shortage of all types of homes, including larger homes for larger families. Because refugees can’t get suitable housing, they are stuck living in asylum centers, unable to start their lives in the Netherlands, and occupying beds desperately needed for asylum seekers still in the process.

“It is quite frustrating for many people,” a COA spokesperson told NOS. “They have often gone through a long asylum procedure and would like to start building their lives in the Netherlands and start integrating. That is very challenging from an asylum seekers’ center.”