Emergency shelter for asylum seekers open longer
The emergency shelter for asylum seekers on the TU Delft campus will be extended by five months. This gives the Central Agency for Asylum Seekers (COA), the municipality and TU Delft time to negotiate the longer extension and expansion requested by COA in December. This is stated in a letter (in Dutch) from the Municipal Executive to the Delft City Council. Initially, the shelter was due to close on 3 February, but COA wants to keep the location open for another five years and increase the number of places from 220 to 420.
According to the Municipal Executive, the parties involved are discussing ‘whether and how’ the extension with five years should come about in the near future. Several scenarios are said to be on the table. TU Delft confirms this and does not yet want to respond to questions about it. The letter does reveal some of the issues at play: ‘feasibility, interaction with the immediate surroundings and future developments, permits, the dispersal law and preconditions for the layout and facilities’. According to regional agreements on the distribution of asylum seekers across the Netherlands that are in the making, Delft should provide 278 ‘sustainable asylum shelters’. That too plays into the considerations. (SB)
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