After the city council had already decided last year that benches in the public space are no longer allowed to have a central rail that hinder sleeping, Amsterdam recently also stopped fining homeless people who sleep out. A ‘principle issue’, it sounded at the town hall last week.
Homeless Wilder Poeper appears to have more than 13,000 euros in cash in their pocket
Entrepreneurs in the city center also made themselves heard in recent weeks. “A growing problem in our area, which can no longer be ignored,” said a spokesperson for the heart of the center, a partnership of entrepreneurs, about homeless people with serious psychological problems.
“They show confused behavior, are aggressive, masturbating in public, people are difficult, sometimes even sexually,” she continued. “Women are caught in their cross, hit on their buttocks and shoppers are aggressively and mandatory. This does not happen incidentally, but several times a day.”
Insufficient grip on confused persons: ‘Appropriate help often does not occur’
Center Emphasizes that everyone deserves a place to sleep, but at the same time sees that homeless people pee and poop in public space and that cleansing leaves something to be desired. And then there are the ‘organized beggars’ who are brought to the city in the morning by people who keep an eye on them and to whom the beggars have to hand in their proceeds. Earlier it was suspected that depositors who break open waste bins also operate partly in such a context.
Entrepreneurs: ‘Nuisance keeps coming back’
Among other things, entrepreneurs would like permanent enforcers, but also more options for those enforcers to perform. “Now the nuisance keeps coming back. That must really be different,” said the spokesperson.
Supermarket chain Albert Heijn is also worried about stopping fines. “We experience nuisance every day in and around our stores,” said a representative. “This not only leads to an unsafe feeling for customers and employees, but also to serious incidents. Our employees are scolded, spit and verbally threatened or physically threatened every day.”
Romeless lives secretly in Amsterdam garbage container: ‘dangerous’
‘Fine important instrument’
Recently, a supermarket manager has been bitten on the Nieuwmarkt in his belly, a homeless out with a taser by agents in the store and a security guard put in his neck with a broken beer bottle. “That is the reality with which we are dealing with every day,” said the representative. “An important instrument disappears to keep these people in the picture.”
Cabinet is expanding test homeless labor migrants with millions of investment
Just like the other entrepreneurs, Albert Heijn wants homeless people to be helped. “Don’t punish for punishing, but ensuring that these people get help.” The incidents are now increasing, while according to the supermarket there is no ‘clearly detailed plan’. “Moreover, we are afraid that this will make Amsterdam more attractive for outdoor sleepers, also from outside the city. And that this will only increase the pressure on our environment.”
80 percent are a former labor migrant from Eastern Europe
There are thousands of homeless people in Amsterdam who sleep outside or on other ‘unconventional places’. About 80 percent of them are a former labor migrant from Eastern Europe. They have lost their job and therefore accommodation in our country. Eastern European homeless people can also be seen in the rising figures of confused behavior on the street.
Offensive against homeless labor migrants: for example, they have to be back to work within 3 weeks
The municipality sees the increase in the number of homeless people, but according to a spokesperson for Alderman Rutger Groot Wassink (GL), the more accessible benches and the abolition of the fine are not ‘boats’ of growth. He thinks that the ‘human approach’ helps to get homeless people towards help, shelter or housing. “The cause is really in greater problems that we are dealing with in the Netherlands,” he says.
The city focuses on shelter and prevention, but also points to the empire. Because there is not only a living crisis, but also ‘a major problem with the control of and enforcement at rogue employment agencies’. They bring cheap workers to the Netherlands, but put these employees on the street without a pardoes when the work falls away.
Thousands of new homeless people in the Netherlands, mostly come from abroad: ‘more and more nuisance’
These people go to the big cities. “Often with the result that they get further into trouble,” says the spokesperson. There is an approach specific for this group, in collaboration with the government. Earlier this year, Minister Eddy van Hijum (NSC) mentioned the ‘sucking effect’ of Amsterdam ‘in Het Parool as a kind of last refuge’.
The cabinet released 13 million euros in May to help these European homeless people in the next three years. 62 percent of the homeless has work and shelter again after guidance, or returns to their own country.
‘Fines for homeless people cannot be collected’
Richard Gerrits from trade union BOA-ACP announces when asked that he welcomes that enforcers no longer issue fines from the homeless. “You can’t take it,” he says. In addition, repression quickly leads to a ‘waterbed effect’. He prefers to focus on ‘behavioral change’.