Brussels emergency shelters turned away 238 children in July

Updated 17 August 2026, 16:00 CEST — BRUSSELS — Samusocial was unable to offer emergency accommodation to 238 children in Brussels during July 2026, including 15 babies, according to figures published by La DH on 11 August. The reported refusals show that families continued to reach the capital’s emergency system when no suitable place was available.

La DH attributed the monthly count to Samusocial, the Brussels organisation providing emergency shelter and social support. The published information does not establish how many separate families were involved, whether any children were counted more than once after repeated requests, or where those refused ultimately slept. No independently published administrative dataset detailing the 238 cases was available by this update.

The figures follow a year of exceptional pressure. Samusocial’s 2025 activity report says more than one-third of first accommodation requests concerned people in families and that the number of children encountered by its street teams quadrupled within a year. The organisation recorded 56,951 requests for emergency-centre accommodation and sheltered 11,383 people across 16 facilities during 2025, according to the same report.

Children already represent a substantial share of those accommodated. Samusocial states that one person in four staying in its centres is a child. Its family network includes 280 places in Evere, 100 at the Colmeia centre and 60 at the Plasky centre in Schaerbeek, according to the organisation’s current service description. Those centres provide private family rooms and psychosocial, medical and educational support, but listed capacity does not by itself indicate how many beds were free in July.

The immediate dispute extends beyond shelter management. Federal Asylum and Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt announced in July that funding under the temporary Brussels Deal would be reduced from about 2,000 reception places to roughly 1,000, according to BRUZZ and the minister’s N-VA statement. Van Bossuyt argues that federal money should cover asylum seekers entitled to reception, while homelessness falls under regional responsibility. Samusocial says removing 1,000 places shared across asylum and homelessness services risks worsening the capital’s humanitarian emergency.

The July child-refusal total cannot yet be directly attributed to those reductions, some of which were only being implemented as the month ended. The next indicators will be Samusocial’s August figures, the closure timetable for Brussels Deal places and any replacement capacity announced by Brussels or federal authorities.