Often people with payment problems wait a long time to seek help. “With this approach, the municipality takes the initiative to offer help,” says outgoing State Secretary Wiersma of Social Affairs, who made the trial possible. “That can make all the difference if you have money worries and can no longer see a solution.”
The trial will start in January next year and will last four years. Early intervention if someone can no longer pay the mortgage or if municipal taxes such as the waste levy or the property tax should prevent the financial misery from increasing.
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In the event of arrears in paying the rent, the energy bill or healthcare costs, a signal is sent to the municipal debt counseling service after only a few months. Municipalities are then obliged to make an offer of assistance.
But not everyone is reached this way. People who can no longer pay the mortgage remain out of the scope of municipal debt assistance. Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Breda and other municipalities are going to experiment with exchanging this data. Mortgage lenders Rabobank and Aegon are also participating in this trial.
Municipal tax debts
The second trial focuses on early identification of municipal tax debts. If residents are unable to pay the property tax, the sewerage levy or the waste levy, it will also be examined more quickly than is currently the case how they can be helped. This trial is being held in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Dordrecht and seven other municipalities.
More than six hundred thousand households are struggling with financial problems that they can no longer solve themselves, according to figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics. The aim of the experiments is to get people in the picture earlier in order to prevent problematic debts.
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