Charlotte (62) has been homeless for three years. She endured a lonely corona time and was recently cured of breast cancer, all without owning a home. Due to a large social network, she never really ended up on the street, but the difference with the past when she was not yet divorced and had some money is big. “I didn’t think about it at the time, but you always have to justify yourself, you are always being watched.”
Now the Zaanse lives somewhere in Velsen-Noord, if the weather is nice. When it’s cold, like the past few days, she stays with a friend of her daughter, who rents an anti-squat in Osdorp because it’s too cold in her Velsen-Nordic residence. “Actually, I’m illegal at both addresses, but yes, you have to do something.”
Because living on the street with, or in the aftermath of, breast cancer is not an option, her daughter’s friend also thought. Charlotte still notices that she is often tired, after being declared cured in December, more than half a year after the diagnosis. She coughs hard: “I haven’t been well the last few days. The cough is still a remnant of that. heard the wind whistling through the pipes in Osdorp last night.”
Out of bed before Bella
Nevertheless, Charlotte likes to go outside regularly, thanks to her dog Bella: “Thank God I have her. Otherwise I might not even get out of bed. Now I have to. In the morning she wants to walk, just like ‘ in the evening before I go to bed. But then I’m on the road for two hours. Then I sit on a bench, chat with someone, or play with Bella and a stick. That’s wonderful, especially in Velsen-Noord. “
Perhaps ‘some nasty things’ have happened, but Charlotte’s mood hardly seems to suffer. “I’m a bit of a Sunday child,” she laughs. She talks freely, laughs often and puts things into perspective. “When I say it like that, it sounds very sad, doesn’t it? It’s not like that.”
She greets people who pass by and look at her and laughs and throws a stick when Bella gets impatient. Her clothes may be nice and big and warm, but certainly not lived in or decayed.
Yet. Three years ago she terminated the rent of an overpriced private sector apartment in the center of Zaandam. “My daughter went to live with her boyfriend. Then I thought: just do it, a thousand euros for one person is too much. And I was a ground stewardess, you don’t earn that much with that. I thought I could quickly find a slightly cheaper house It would be possible to bridge the gap. But I didn’t think that would take at least three years.”
It wasn’t easy anyway, since the divorce from her husband in 2014. “My son then stayed with my ex-husband. My daughter went with me.” because the house was actually too expensive. My daughter went to university and took driving lessons, which is not cheap either. And I also wanted to go on holiday with her for a week, nothing too crazy, but I did want to get away for a while.”
After canceling the lease, she left for Spain, where she could stay with a friend for a while. Then corona broke out and Charlotte was there for nine months. “I missed everything and everyone there, luckily I had Bella. At least you could go outside with a dog, that was nice, to take long walks. I really enjoyed that.”
Once back in the Netherlands, she could live in her current place in Velsen-Noord and when it got colder ‘with an old neighbor from the past.’ And so Charlotte stringed together places to stay, but to her frustration she still couldn’t get a house. “My stuff is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing is really yours. That’s really annoying.”
Despite not having a place of her own for three years now and moving around all the time, she has absolutely no regrets about her choice: “Then I would have had even less than I have now, I think.”
Always watched
She regularly walks Bella in the park in front of the asylum ship for a thousand asylum seekers on the edge of Velsen-Noord. There she says: “I feel very sorry for the people on this boat. And also for people who are victims of the benefits affair and have been punished so terribly. You have to say thank you all the time, be grateful. Of course you are, but oh woe if you have to ask something in our society, then you have to bare your buttocks.”
Charlotte: “Also something like that: you need an address for everything and if you are registered somewhere for more than three months, it is your home address. So I keep changing my postal address from my daughter to my brother and a friend and back again. When I had a house, a good job and a car, I didn’t think about it then, because if you have money, they leave you alone, if you don’t, you always have to justify yourself, you’re always being watched It makes me obstinate,” though she still sounds more puzzled than angry.
Beautiful things
In a strange way, the homeless period has brought Charlotte some beautiful things. She mentions the people around her in Velsen-Noord, for example: “When I had chemotherapy in August or September, well, people here saw that of course. So they checked in the morning whether I had woken up, they brought food. Really fantastic.”
She also calls it a blessing in disguise that she didn’t have to endure that disease in the winter: “Summer is the best time to have breast cancer, that sounds crazy, but it really was. With the cold it was really not too bad. done. Now I didn’t need a jug.”
And recently Charlotte had a real ‘lucky moment’: I am now number 2 for a 55+ home in Zaandam. A year ago that was still number 11. I think it must be crazy if I don’t want to have a small house there by the end of the year. In the summer I can still survive here in Velsen-Noord.”