Homeless migrant workers are returning to work thanks to new pilot municipalities

• Barbara Visscher

  editor Economics

Six municipalities have helped a few hundred homeless migrant workers back to work in two years. Homeless migrant workers enter short-term shelter in these municipalities and are helped to find work or guided in returning to their country of origin. With this trial, the municipalities want to prevent the number of homeless migrant workers from further increasing.

Amsterdam and Eindhoven are among the six municipalities participating in the pilot. They see that more and more European migrants who come to the Netherlands to work end up on the streets or in tents in the forest.

Municipalities often exclude this group of migrants from reception. But some of them now believe that migrants are entitled to this because of their work history. Moreover, they also see offering help as a better way to combat the nuisance that homeless migrant workers often cause.

With 7 million euros from the government, municipalities participating in the pilot have set up additional places to accommodate migrant workers. They all do it in their own way. For example, migrants in Venlo can stay in a hotel for a few nights and in Eindhoven people are accommodated for up to two weeks in a pavilion at the Trade Forum, just outside the center.

According to Samir Toub, councilor for social support in Eindhoven, it is important that there are shelters for them because otherwise the nuisance on the street will increase.

“People have nowhere to go, so they have no place to shower or go to the toilet. They then relieve themselves on the street. They also sometimes sleep together in groups and that creates a feeling of insecurity,” he says.

Municipalities have their own approach, but migrants are everywhere helped to return to work or to return to their country of origin. This is often Poland, Romania, Spain or Bulgaria.

Migrant workers Aleksandra Waleska and Sławomir Grabowski came together from Poland to the Netherlands eight years ago to work as a cleaner. “But due to the corona crisis we both lost our jobs and shortly afterwards we also lost our house,” they say. A period of living on the street and in night shelter followed.

With the help of the municipality, they have now found a house and a new job. They work in a sorting center in Amsterdam. “It’s a big difference from what our lives were like a few months ago.” They have no plans to return to Poland.

Migrants like Waleska and Grabowski have a relatively high chance of becoming homeless. They often find work in the Netherlands through an employment agency. That usually also arranges a place to sleep. These can be linked to each other through certain constructions: if the migrant worker loses his or her job, the home also disappears.

Housing providers for migrant workers use flexible contracts on a large scale, weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer discovered this month. An inventory of 146 larger housing locations shows that 114 have such a contract. Migrants have little security of tenure and find themselves on the street without work from one day to the next.

The municipalities call the pilot a success. “80 percent of the migrants who are received here find work or return to their country of origin. And 20 percent sometimes need a little longer to get involved,” says councilor Toub.

There are fifteen shelters in Eindhoven. Each room has two beds and a cupboard. “People can stay here for a maximum of two weeks. At the moment the length of stay is about nine days, so the flow is very good.”

Yet there are also concerns, because financing from the government will stop at the end of next year. ”There must be structural financing. Only then can these kinds of places remain,” said Toub. He believes that the working method should also be adopted in other municipalities.

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment has stated in a response that it will soon be decided whether the financing will continue for longer.