Trudo housing corporation residents to get monthly discount if they guide new arrivals through Dutch customs and rules

A social landlord in the Netherlands is offering to cut rents by €100 (£80) a month if tenants help refugees integrate into society.



The Trudo housing corporation, based in Eindhoven, says residents will receive the discount if they agree to spend 10 hours a week helping new migrants navigate Dutch bureaucracy and guiding them through their host country’s rules and customs.

“We expect them to do two things,” said the managing director, Thom Aussems. “First, they should help them settle into their new home, get to know their neighbours, and learn things like when to take the bins out.

“Secondly, they can act as a kind of liaison officer when they’re dealing with institutions in areas like learning the language, education, work and social security, so they can highlight any problems quickly.”

Thom Aussems: ‘If you give people the opportunity to connect with each other and work together, it’s a lot more effective.’ Photograph: Trudo

Social landlords, which own and manage around 30% of all housing in the Netherlands, are obliged to accommodate “status holders” - refugees who have gained the legal right to stay in the country. Aussems’ organisation has 85 refugees on its books this year and expects to take in twice as many next year.

The initiative is one of scores across Europe in which ordinary people are seeking to help refugees adjust, integrate and even find work.

Trudo operates in some of the most deprived districts of Eindhoven. Aussems says the average monthly rent is around €435, so a €100 discount is a fair-sized carrot for tenants on low incomes. The housing corporation is funding the €250,000 scheme from its own resources, as part of a five-year €430m investment programme.

The idea came from a 2007 project in which young tenants were given a similar discount in return for helping local schoolchildren with their homework. “We wanted to prevent another lost generation,” said Aussems. “Within four years we had helped 350 children. It was a fantastic result.

“So then we went looking other areas where we could adopt the same strategy. We identified seven or eight, one of which was helping refugees settle.”

The refugee issue has caused social unrest in parts of the Netherlands, where asylum applications doubled in 2015 to 59,000. Pigs’ heads have been dumped beside fields where asylum seekers’ centres were due to be built and police had to break up a riot outside a council meeting to outline a proposed centre for 1,500 refugees.

Geert Wilders, leader of the populist rightwing Freedom party, which is leading Dutch opinion polls, called for all male refugees to be locked up in the wake of the new year sex attacks in Cologne.

Aussems said his incentive was designed to defuse tensions between local residents and refugees before they reached crisis point.

“Tensions occur when people don’t know each other, can’t understand each other or can’t communicate,” he said. “If you give people the opportunity to connect with each other and work together, it’s a lot more effective and efficient than doing it via the bureaucratic route.”



