When you get your residence permit, you are connected to a municipality. This municipality will find a house for you. When this accommodation suits your situation, you have to accept it. Sometimes you will get a temporary house before you get your own house. A volunteer from VluchtelingenWerk in the municipality will help you to arrange the important things in and around your house.
Social housing
Every status holder that is connected to a municipality will receive their own house. This house is a rental home from the social housing sector. Rental homes in the social housing sector are made for people with a small income. You pay less than €710 every month (without the costs for gas, water and light).
Most social housing homes are property of a housing corporation. These are big organisations that build houses and rent them. To live in a social rented house you have to register with a housing corporation. After that you are put on a waiting list. All Dutch people can register for a social rented house. To have the right for a social rented house you have to have a long waiting time. It can take years before you have the right for a social rented house. There is a long list of people waiting before you.
Priority on the waiting list for social housing
In most municipalities you get priority on the waitinglist when you are a statusholder. Also in Nijmegen. Did you get a residence permit? And are you connected to a municipality? Then you will be put on top of the waitinglist for a social rented house. When the municipality finds a house that fits your situation, COA will offer you this house. You only get one offer.
Attention
You have to accept this offer (or have very good reasons not to). If you do not do this, you will lose priority on the waitinglist. In practice, this means that you will become homeless, because you will have to leave COA within two weeks after the offer. Finding an affordable rental home in a short time period is almost impossible.
Signing your housing contract
When you rent a house, you first sign a housing contract. In this contract are the rules for renting the house. When you have partner, you sign the contract together. From the day the contract is signed, you have two weeks to move from the AZC to your new home. You pay rent every month. The price of the rent differs per house.
Huurtoeslag – financial help to pay your rent
Do you have a low income? And do you have a social rented house? To help you pay the rent of the house people with a low income can receive a small amount of money from the government every month. This is called ‘huurtoeslag’ or a housing benefit in English. To get this money your income and savings have to be below a certain standard. The height of your huurtoeslag depends on your family situation and your income.
Click here for more information about huurtoeslag.
Registration at your municipality
When you get a house you register yourself (and family) with the municipality where you rent the house. You do this together with your VWN-volunteer. The municipality will register your personal data in the ‘basisregistratie personen (BRP)’. This is a national register through which the government knows where you live. These data are also important to arrange your huurtoeslag, bijstand and other benefits.
A temporary house in your municipality
Sometimes the municipality where you live will give you a temporary house first. This is because they have not found a good house for you yet. They can give you this house for maximum 2 years. After that they have to give you your own house. When this temporary house is a GVA accommodation, there are a couple of benefits:
⇒ You still receive the weekly living money from COA
⇒ You are still insured by the insurance from COA
Only when the municipality has found a house for you, you have the right to bijstandsuitkering.
Are you moving to your own house?
Congratulations with your own house! Vluchtelingenwerk has made a brochure to welcome you. Here you will find all the things you should arrange when you get your house.
Arabic: VWN Welkom in uw gemeente
English: VWN Welkom in uw gemeente
Tigrinya: VWN Welkom in uw gemeente
Dutch: VWN Welkom in uw gemeente
Do you want to move to another house? Or do you want to search for you own house? Click here for more information.
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