How the Netherlands engineered its asylum crisis and turned profit

(NETHERLANDS) The Dutch government closed regular asylum reception centres years before arrivals rebounded and then paid private companies premium rates to house people in makeshift sites, creating an asylum crisis that experts say was engineered and then turned into a business. While the number of asylum seekers has hovered around 55,000 per year since 2022, reception costs have more than doubled to €3.6 billion in 2024, and thousands of people are living for months in emergency accommodation such as hotels, cruise ships, sports halls and tents.

Investigative findings and interviews with policy specialists point to a system that shrank capacity even as need stayed steady, leaving a shortage of 5,000 beds as early as 2019. No new permanent facilities were built to close the gap. When arrivals resumed after the pandemic, the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers, the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA), had little choice but to contract stopgap sites that were supposed to be temporary. Those sites have become semi-permanent. People now spend months, sometimes years, in rooms originally meant for tourists or in halls meant for sports. The Netherlands’ asylum crisis, critics argue, is not a surge without precedent but a policy-made bottleneck that has pushed reception into the hands of commercial providers and inflated the bill for taxpayers.

“The political will to implement real solutions is lacking. That is the main cause of the situation we are in now. It creates a constant state of panic, which is completely unnecessary,”

said Myrthe Wijnkoop, head of lobby & policy at Vluchteligenwerk. Her assessment is echoed by human rights advocates who say the use of emergency tools has become the norm, at once eroding living standards and empowering private intermediaries with little public oversight.

Those intermediaries and landlords have flourished. Hotel chains, including Fletcher, holiday parks and even cruise ship operators have become stand-in reception centres, with the COA paying an average of €250 per night for a hotel room for an asylum seeker—more than four times the price regular tourists are charged. Emergency accommodation is on average twice as expensive as beds in regular reception centres, yet it often provides poorer care and little stability. For people waiting on decisions, that means long stints in remote camps far from communities, schools and services, with isolation feeding anxiety and depression.

The business does not stop at room rates. A company called LCHD acted as the exclusive intermediary between the COA and the hotels that filled the gap. Over two-and-a-half years, LCHD generated hundreds of millions of euros in revenue from bookings and the commissions it charged. Its owner, René Derksen, received approximately €44 million in profits. The Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) has opened an investigation into Derksen, and the Public Prosecution Service has seized €50 million worth of his assets, including real estate and luxury cars. The case underscores how the Netherlands’ emergency posture became a profit stream for a small circle of brokers and landlords even as public budgets swelled and conditions deteriorated.

As money flowed to private operators, medical care inside reception sites also shifted toward commercial providers. Companies supplying doctors and nurses charged high rates, turning basic health services into another revenue line linked to the emergency accommodation network. For the people inside those sites, the experience often feels like a system run for contracts rather than care. Sociologists describe how, in controlled living environments with few rights and tight rules, asylum seekers are stripped of autonomy and cast into an “inmate role.” People are assigned a number, their documents are taken away, and contact with broader society narrows to a trickle.

The political response has hardened. Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV, has amplified a drumbeat against migration as the number of arrivals recovered after pandemic lows.

“The Netherlands is becoming one big asylum seekers’ centre,”

he said, harnessing public frustration about reception sites to push for limits well beyond existing European rules. The government has proposed stricter border controls, a moratorium on new asylum applications, and harsher regulations for those granted asylum, while exploring whether rejected applicants could be sent to Uganda. It has also requested an opt-out from European migration and asylum legislation. Rights groups and legal experts argue these steps do not tackle the structural causes inside the Netherlands—shrunk capacity, overreliance on short-term fixes and costly contracts—but instead raise the political temperature while keeping the emergency approach in place.

The financial stakes have climbed at pace. Reception costs jumped from €1.6 billion in 2022 to €3.6 billion in 2024 despite stable yearly inflows. That spike tracks closely with the expansion of premium-priced sites. Each emergency bed costs roughly double a regular one, and the sums multiply quickly when entire hotels or cruise ships are booked for months. The signposts of a commercial market have followed: a Dutch real estate training institute now advertises a course titled “Asylum reception as a business model in the Netherlands.” For developers and operators, reception is no longer a civic obligation but a line of business with predictable public payments and limited competition, especially when an intermediary sits in the middle.

The origins of the crunch are comparatively simple. In 2019, the network of regular centres already lacked 5,000 beds. That shortfall was not fixed, and when arrivals resumed after COVID-19 restrictions, the Netherlands was still operating with fewer permanent places than it needed. Officials leaned on “temporary” locations that, in practice, have rolled forward from one short-term contract to another. The result is a patchwork: tents in one province, a sports hall in another, a cruise ship moored near a port, and hotel corridors that remain full long after summer tourists have gone. For people in the system, basic routines—getting children to school, booking doctor appointments, finding a place to cook—become daily puzzles negotiated through layers of staff and rules.

As the emergency accommodation network expanded, intermediaries found leverage. LCHD, with exclusive control over hotel bookings, set terms and collected opaque commissions, according to investigators. Over two-and-a-half years, those commissions helped generate hundreds of millions of euros in turnover, much of it ultimately paid from public funds dedicated to reception. The FIOD’s investigation and the prosecutor’s seizure of €50 million in assets, including properties and luxury cars linked to owner René Derksen, have raised questions about how such a dominant position was allowed to form and whether any safeguards were in place when the state pressed agencies to find beds at any cost.

For the people inside, the shift has everyday consequences. Remote locations limit access to work, language classes and legal aid, reinforcing the sense of waiting without progress. The controlled environment—uniform schedules, meal times fixed by staff, strict curfews—adds to the feeling of being managed rather than supported. The social isolation that follows can push vulnerable people into crisis. Human rights organizations say that when the Netherlands leans on emergency accommodation for months on end, it turns what should be short-term shelter into long-term warehousing.

Advocates, including the Dutch Council for Refugees, dispute the idea that the country faces a genuine emergency in numbers. They argue that authorities have used the framing of a crisis to activate emergency mechanisms that bypass parliament and suspend asylum rights, even as the overall volume of claims has remained steady since 2022. The core problem, they say, is capacity, which is a policy choice. Wijnkoop put it bluntly:

“the political will to implement real solutions is lacking. That is the main cause of the situation we are in now. It creates a constant state of panic, which is completely unnecessary.”

Building and maintaining permanent centres, even at modest scale, would cost less than paying hotel rates, deliver better care and restore some normalcy, she and other experts contend.

The government’s pledges to toughen rules reflect pressure from parties that want sharper limits on asylum, but they do not reverse the market that grew around emergency sites. Contracts with hotel chains and operators roll forward. A hotel room at €250 a night becomes a steady revenue stream for landlords, whether or not it suits families waiting for decisions. Cruise ships docked as floating reception centres remain tied to quays where residents are separated from towns by distance and security gates. Holiday parks become year-round dormitories, even as their design—small cabins for short stays—does little to support long-term needs.

The Netherlands is also weighing steps beyond its borders. Proposals to send rejected asylum seekers to Uganda mirror arrangements other European states have explored. The government has asked for an opt-out from European migration and asylum legislation, a sign of how national politics have shifted toward unilateral measures even as reception and status decisions remain governed by EU rules. Critics warn that such moves will face legal hurdles while doing little to address the causes of the Dutch system’s dysfunction: reduced regular capacity, overreliance on emergency accommodation and a web of commercially attractive contracts.

Inside the emergency sites, the economics play out in daily life. Commercial firms supplying medical staff charge high rates for routine care, turning a core service into a profit centre. Agency staff, hired through private contractors, churn in and out, making it hard to build trust or maintain continuity. Residents tell advocates that each move—from a sports hall to a hotel and then to a tent camp—resets everything: the school enrollment for a child, the waiting list for a therapist, the relationship with a caseworker. The instability compounds the stress of the asylum process itself, which already involves long waits for interviews and decisions.

The story of LCHD illustrates how quickly private actors gained control of the market. With exclusive access to hotel bookings for the COA, the company became the gateway through which public funds reached rooms across the country. In two-and-a-half years it generated hundreds of millions in revenue, and its owner, René Derksen, collected approximately €44 million in profits, according to investigators. The FIOD’s probe and the Public Prosecution Service’s seizure of €50 million in assets, including real estate and luxury cars, show how the state is now moving to scrutinize the profits that spun out of emergency accommodation. But the broader contracts—rooms leased by hotel chains like Fletcher, holiday parks turned into dorms, cruise ships hired as floating hostels—continue to underpin the system.

Meanwhile, market signals grow louder. A Dutch real estate training institute now pitches “Asylum reception as a business model in the Netherlands,” framing reception not as a public service but as an investment opportunity. For developers, the message is clear: the state will pay, often at premium rates, for sites that can be activated quickly. For the communities that host those sites, the costs are social as much as fiscal: schools juggling mid-year arrivals, buses rerouted to serve remote facilities, and debates that polarize local politics.

As long as the Netherlands leans on emergency accommodation, the gap between cost and quality is likely to persist. Emergency sites are, by design, more expensive and less suited to long stays than regular centres. They also create power for intermediaries, who sit between the state and the hotels, extracting commissions while limiting transparency. In that setup, asylum seekers become line items on contracts rather than neighbours with pathways to integration. The government’s pledges—stricter borders, a moratorium, harsher rules—do not change the fact that tens of thousands of people need stable shelter each year, a figure that has been steady since 2022.

What happens next depends on whether policymakers choose to rebuild permanent capacity and unwind the commercial scaffolding erected during the emergency. Advocates argue that establishing durable centres would lower costs below hotel rates and make it easier to provide consistent services, from schooling to healthcare. It would also reduce the need for intermediaries whose profits, as in the LCHD case, have drawn the attention of financial investigators. Until then, the Netherlands will continue to pay more for less, and the asylum crisis will remain a self-made loop: shortages that produce emergency accommodation, emergency accommodation that invites commerce, and commerce that cements the status quo.