Housing shortage resulting in kids sleeping in cars, garages throughout Netherlands
Throughout the Netherlands, more children are spending their nights in cars, hallways, and garages, Nieuwsuur reports after surveying schools with the Youth Education Fund. Care providers suspect the housing shortage is to blame.
In Amsterdam Zuidoost, the chain that helps unhoused children is overrun, Nienke Jaarsme of the Parent and Child Team in the Bijlmer area told the program. Even if a family gets an “urgency declaration,” the waiting time for a home is six to eight months. And temporary shelters are subject to very strict conditions. She, therefore, urges parents to also look outside Amsterdam, even if it means relocating. “It is silted up here on all sides. You still try to organize safe places and moments for children, but housing remains the biggest problem here.”
At the Blijmerhorst primary school in Amsterdam Zuidoost, at least one in 20 children don’t have a permanent place to stay, bridge officer Ester Muriani told the program. She offers kids guidance in such situations and expects that she does not have every struggling child in view. So the school gives all children a packed lunch. It also has a washing machine and a shower on-site, which parents can also use. "There are people who think: if I rent a garage, I can at least put a bed there and at least have a place to sleep for me and my children,” Muriani said.
The Youth Education Fund, which helps children with learning materials like laptops, is increasingly helping families with hotel stays because they have nowhere else to go. Director Hans Spekman attributes the problem to the housing shortage. “For example, when people split up, they don’t have an alternative, and everything comes to a standstill.”
Nieuwsuur spoke to a single mom in exactly that situation in Amsterdam. “We can’t go anywhere. I have three children,” she said. Her husband left them last year, and she and their children ended up on the street. She and her children camped out in the hallway of an apartment complex for two months, for example. “That was hell. A real hell. I can’t talk about it,” she said. “We get up at 4:30, and when we get back, the children are too tired to do homework.”
