Welcoming Ukrainians into their homes, many Belgians have volunteered without knowing for how long. However, this can have many repercussions on daily life but also on the status of cohabitant for example. Here’s what to know with Lionel Defraigne, head of the CALM project, Comme à la maison, a project of the ASBL Singa, which deals with the inclusion and accommodation of refugees in Brussels.
Do you agree that they live with you?
To have access to assistance from the CPAS, Ukrainians must first be domiciled. And if they live with you, your address will be filled in. This is not without consequences. If you have an isolated person status, for example, you will lose it.
“On talks regarding the fact that Ukrainian people will have access to social rights, to the labor market, to income for integration through the CPAS, to mutual insurance, etc., that’s true, but what we forget is is quite surprising to specify for the citizens, it is that these steps to make them succeed, it is necessary to start by having a residence in Belgium. You need an address.”
If they live with you, it is therefore your address that will be provided to the municipality when it is necessary to go there with the certificate that Ukrainian people receive when they register at Heysel. “We then have to wait for the neighborhood officer to come. That means that the people we are hosting will be domiciled at home. So the citizens still have to know it, agree with it, or be at comfortable.”
For how long ?
Who says passage of the neighborhood agent, says wait a few weeks. “CThe steps will take some time to complete. So, when citizens are asked to host, even for very short periods of a few weeks, it is perhaps not really doing a service to Ukrainian people because the settlement procedures, for them to succeed, it takes 2 to 3 months for them to be really completed.”
What is needed is to be able to set up a good quality reception in sufficient time
Ditto for the procedures with the CPAS. “There are 30 legal days to make a decision. Maybe things will go faster in this case, but all the same, be careful not to encourage proposals to host a few nights like that, in a hurry with the idea of helping, when ‘in fact, what is needed is to be able to set up a good quality reception in sufficient time to allow a real settlement and a real access to the rights of refugees.
Do you have a personal place to offer them?
If you were moved by seeing the images on television and want to offer a sofa for the night, it can help in the short term but it is not a lasting solution, explains Lionel Defraigne.
