Nearly 8% of social housing units allocated to refugees in 2023

Nearly 8 percent of the rental properties from housing corporations that became available in 2023 went to refugees, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported. This is about one percentage point more than in the previous year. In earlier years, this percentage fluctuated between 4 and 7 percent.

The 2023 figures are the most recent data on this topic. A total of 161,000 social housing units became available two years ago. Of these, 148,290 went to households with no refugee members, and 12,729 went to households with one or more refugees - asylum seekers whose applications were approved and who received residency permits for the Netherlands.

Nearly half of the refugees who moved into social housing had already had a residency permit for more than a year.

Alkmaar and the surrounding area allocated the highest proportion of social housing units to refugees, namely around 13 percent. In Delfzijl and the surrounding area, this happened the least, at 2 percent.

Municipalities are required to provide suitable housing for refugees. The larger the municipality, the more refugees it must house. The caretaker government wants to abolish this requirement and ban municipalities from prioritizing refugees when allocating scarce social housing, despite criticism from the Council of State, among others. The government’s chief advisor called the bill to abolish priority for refugees discriminatory and unconstitutional.