Several large housing complexes with hundreds of rooms need to be built in the short term in the Frisian city of Heerenveen for migrant workers.
Translation by Traci White
The Leeuwarder Courant reports that the municipality is making preparations to build additional accommodations as part of their new room rental policy.
Two requests have been submitted to build separate housing complexes: one request is for up to 150 people, and another is for rooms for between 150 and 400 workers, the latter of which was submitted by one company. The municipality declined to name the company that has made the request.
The municipality will meet to further discuss future housing developments in February, including considering locations for where the housing complexes would ultimately be built.
Heerenveen mayor Tjeerd van der Zwan has previously said that the municipality is working together with employment agencies and large companies in the area to provide quality housing for the employees. In addition to accommodations for migrant workers, the policy is also focused on housing for students, athletes and semi-assisted living.
Creating enough housing for migrant workers has become an urgent issue across the country due to economic prosperity of the past few years. The number of migrant workers doing jobs in the Netherlands has grown, and in Heerenveen in particular, Polish workers are employed at businesses across the municipality. Leeuwarden is also home to an increasing number of foreign labourers.
