Homeless shelters for families bursting at the seams
Dutch shelters catering to homeless families are overflowing with people. Especially in the large cities, the demand for emergency shelter for parents with minor children has grown so much that there’s nowhere to house them. Aid organizations report families living in garages and women staying in abusive relationships because they have nowhere to turn, Trouw reports.
In The Hague, 522 families applied for emergency shelter last year, up from around 390 five years ago. The municipality had to turn 120 families away last year. In Rotterdam, the number of families needing shelter increased from 542 two years ago to 634 last year.
Amsterdam also has to turn people away. Currently, all 228 places in the emergency shelters are occupied, and the municipality is sheltering 19 families in hotel rooms. The situation is no different in Utrecht. The city has waiting lists for a single room with beds, a spokesperson told Trouw. “Families wait around six months before they can be accommodated.”
Local politicians and aid workers blame the housing shortage for the increase in families facing homelessness. Families are sometimes forced to live in hotels or emergency shelters for years because they cannot find suitable housing. That also means they continue occupying shelter space, so no new families can be accommodated.
The Hague recently decided that it has to accommodate fewer families. Due to the increasing demand and stagnation in the flow of people, the costs of sheltering vulnerable families have risen from around €1 million per year to over €9 million in recent years, the city told Trouw. This jeopardizes other forms of support, including healthcare and shelter for other homeless people.
The four large cities are also applying increasingly strict admission requirements. One such is that families must have “regional ties” - they must be continuously registered at a residential address in the applicable city for at least four years before they can apply for municipal assistance there.
