Frustrated by how long it has taken EU governments to find shelter for the wave of migrants from the Middle East, three Dutch students have set up an Airbnb-style website to connect refugees around the world with “heroes” offering them temporary free accommodation.
The site, refugeehero.com, went live on Monday when it had more than 1,500 hits, and the three young entrepreneurs behind it say they have already had offers of accommodation from private individuals in France, Sweden, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Ireland.
Jamal Oulel (25), Ayoub Aouragh (24) and Germaine Statia (23) say a key principle is that no money changes hands for the accommodation – and they have promised to personally verify every pledge of space to ensure that it’s genuine and of an acceptable standard.
Flexible
The beauty of the site, they say, is that it is flexible. Individuals or families can offer space in their homes. Groups of students sharing a house can club together to cover the cost of an extra person. Or institutions such as churches, mosques or schools can offer shelter for larger numbers.
The site is in English and French, and refugees can search using simple filters for location and number of people before getting in touch personally with potential hosts.
Their starting point, said Mr Oulel, was the realisation that the Netherlands spent €495 million to accommodate refugees and asylum-seekers last year alone – and that governments across Europe are being stretched to capacity by the most recent influx.
“We could see that the official way of allocating accommodation was very cumbersome, time-consuming and inefficient. We figured we could make it cheaper, faster and more efficient – and so that was our starting point.”
“We do not have a revenue model. Let’s say we want to help give mankind back some of its humanity. And we hope that by housing refugees in private homes rather than in camps we will help them to integrate more quickly into Dutch society.”
Generation
Mr Oulel’s father had moved to the Netherlands from Morocco before he was born, and that prompted Mr Oulel to offer a room in his own home in Rotterdam. “I was delighted to receive a call last Monday evening, and even though that particular caller didn’t follow through – that was the point when I realised: this can actually work.”
To some extent, openness to sharing accommodation with refugees is a generational issue, he said. “It seems to me there are a lot of millennials offering temporary room in their apartments. There are a lot of students offering space even though they’re living on student loans. We are part of Generation Y – and so I suppose we are very open to the world.”
The aim now is to make refugeehero.com a key resource for migrants on the move anywhere in the world by offering, along with accommodation, information on how to apply for asylum, social security, or a passport.
