Dutch landlord gives tenants €100 discount for helping refugees
The housing association hopes the 'adopt a newcomer' scheme will help to encourage diversity in neighbourhoods
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Your support makes all the difference.Tenants of a Dutch housing association are being offered a €100 rent cut if they become a “buddy” to a refugee.
Trudo, a housing association in Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands, will ask tenants to help refugees adapt to everyday Dutch life.
Natives will show refugees how to do chores like using the different kinds of bins and help them with Dutch bureaucracy for ten hours a week.
In return they will have the equivalent of £80 deducted from their monthly rent. For the average tenant, they will make a saving of almost a quarter.
Thom Aussems, director of the housing association, told Dutch broadcaster Omroep Brabant: “If refugees are given legal status we are required to house them.
“We want to find someone in the housing complex who can help them feel at home in the neighbourhood and let them know the customs of our country.
“They will be able to raise the alarm if they see something going wrong with their financial affairs, healthcare or education.”
The housing association hopes the “adopt a newcomer” scheme will help to encourage diversity in neighbourhoods and prevent whole areas from becoming disadvantaged.
Social landlords own around 30 per cent of the housing stock in the Netherlands. Trudo currently houses 85 refugees and expects to take in double the amount next year.
The refugee plan is part of a €430 million investment by the company, which will also build almost 1,800 social homes in five years.
The idea for the system emerged earlier project in the city which rewarded students with discounts if they mentored local children for ten hours a week. After the scheme successfully helped 350 children, Aussems looked for other areas where the scheme could help.
Since asylum applications in the Netherlands doubled last year to 59,000, anti-refugee sentiment has become apparent, with protests taking place outside sites due to host asylum seekers.
Following the January sex attacks in Cologne, the leader of the right wing Freedom Party currently enjoying a surge in support, called for all male refugees to be locked up.
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