Groningen to temporarily house asylum seekers with students

Groningen will create a crisis shelter for asylum seekers in the student housing complex The Village on Peizerweg. The shelter will open on Thursday and should accommodate 80 to 100 asylum seekers from Syria, Eritrea, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, and Yemen, among others. The asylum seekers are expected to stay there for about three months while awaiting placement in a regular asylum seeker center.

The shelter will be created on a vacant floor above the common area of the student complex. The area is sometimes used to accommodate students at peak times. That is not the case now, so the landlord was able to make the floor available for the reception of asylum seekers, said a spokesperson for the municipality. The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) is currently installing walls and further preparing the space for the asylum seekers.

With this crisis shelter, Groningen is responding to a call from the COA for municipalities to set up additional temporary shelter locations due to crowds at the asylum registration center in Ter Apel. Between 2,300 and 2,500 asylum seekers have been sleeping at the Ter Apel registration center in recent weeks, while there is room for only 2,000. “The municipality of Groningen considers it important to contribute to the humane reception of asylum seekers and is, therefore, happy to respond to this request,” the municipality said.

Stadskanaal, another municipality in the Groningen province, is also helping Ter Apel. It will set up heated tents with room for 200 asylum seekers. This temporary shelter is expected to be ready for use on Thursday. The tents will be there until the end of January.

Groningen administrators are “furious and frustrated” about the injustice done to people seeking protection in Ter Apel, King’s Commissioner Rene Paas said in an emotional address at the Provincial Council of Groningen. He spoke of an embarrassing crisis in Ter Apel that is not yet over. “If Dutch administrators continue to sit on their hands, trouble will break out.”

Other provinces also have meetings, and mayors and Ministers make phone calls. But because the “very necessary” distribution law does not exist, they have no formal powers, Paas said, and “goodwill is not everywhere.” The Cabinet has failed to live up to its promise that Ter Apel would not get overcrowded to the point that people risk sleeping outside again, Paas said. Although he added that this was partly because it depends on the cooperation of others.

The municipality of Groningen informed locals and students living in The Village about the crisis shelter by letter. The COA is responsible for the management of the shelter and is the point of contact for all entrepreneurs and individuals around the location.

The COA said it is happy with the new emergency shelter. “That has helped us a lot. But it is not a structural solution,” a spokesperson responded. He said the COA is doing everything it can to prevent people from having to sleep outside in the grass. “You don’t want them outside in these circumstances. The need remains high. If municipalities don’t step in, this situation will continue to exist.”