Nobody should sleep on the street in the Netherlands. Even for the small group of people who prefer to sleep outside than inside, there should always be shelter if they need it. That sounds quite obvious, but various shelters have noted that homeless shelters are overcrowded everywhere. They see the homeless who have nowhere to go and who also fall outside the official figures.
In November, Statistics Netherlands noted a ‘decrease’ in the number of officially homeless people, from 39,000 a few years earlier to 32,000 in 2021. But Eastern Europeans, people over 65 and under 18 do not count in those figures. The thousands of people who sleep in different places or live in a caravan are also not included in the official homeless figures. Statistics Netherlands cannot say anything about the cause of the official ‘decline’.
The Netherlands has long viewed homelessness as a care issue: the people who end up on the street need psychological care. Isn’t there, like the long waiting lists for demonstrate current mental health care, and if you end up on the street, there is some day and night shelter in every larger city. But full is full.
The idea is that one is responsible, in principle, to get one’s life back on track. That people must be ‘self-reliant’ and, if necessary, call in family and friends for help. However, it turns out time and again that some people are simply not self-reliant – they spend money incorrectly and have heavy debts or psychiatric problems, or both – and do not have family and friends who (still) want to help them.
Homelessness in the Netherlands is now more than just the result of a lack of care and shelter; it is also a housing problem. The great scarcity of housing means that there are also long waiting lists for houses at the bottom of the market. In Utrecht, for example, people without ‘urgency’ are on the waiting list for social housing for an average of eleven years. Seven years in The Hague.
Priority is given to status holders, people with psychological problems and physical disabilities or women fleeing domestic violence.
Homeless people, with the right help, also receive such a ‘declaration of urgency’. But people who have just been divorced or have been evicted due to rent arrears do not immediately receive an ‘urgency statement’. And they can’t find a house. They sleep with friends, at holiday parks and in the worst case on the street. So they must first become officially homeless before they are entitled to an emergency declaration again.
And even then there is a great shortage of houses. “Moving on to your own home hardly exists here,” said Jeroen Melchior, field worker at the Hague University of Applied Sciences Street Consulate last week in NRC. “People are sometimes in 24-hour shelter for years, the main cause is the lack of available housing.”
Finland has an exceptional policy: first a house is sought for the homeless and only then care is organised. The number of homeless people has been declining for several years.
It is therefore a good thing, but rather late, that ministers De Jonge (Huisvesting, CDA), Schouten (Social Affairs, ChristenUnie) and State Secretary Van Ooijen (Healthcare, CU) in their plans for tackling homelessness, include housing above care. point to as a solution. “We want to ensure that homeless people quickly get a roof over their heads,” said Van Ooijen in June. That is a big, urgent assignment.
Also read this article: Husband, used to be a nurse, now lives on the street. There are plans, but the housing shortage is getting in the way
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 17, 2022