Many homeless migrant workers accepting Dutch cities' offer of help returning home

Six Dutch cities have been experimenting with offering homeless migrant workers help in returning to their home countries, and many are accepting the offer. Since last year, aid workers in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, Eindhoven, and Venlo have helped around 700 people go home, Trouw reports.

According to trade union CNV, there are currently around 10,000 migrant workers living on Dutch streets. That is about 60 percent of all homeless people in the Netherlands. Many migrant workers are housed by their employers, so if they lose their jobs, they lose their housing too. Attempts to do something about this have so far not been very successful.

Last year, the six Dutch municipalities decided to try a different approach. They asked homeless migrant workers if they would like to return home, voluntarily and without further obligations. The city would buy them a bus or train ticket, and even send an aid worker to accompany them if needed.

So far, at least 700 people have taken them up on the offer. In Amsterdam, 386 people cooperated in this voluntary return, out of the total 700 living on the streets of the Dutch capital. Utrecht also bought passage home to half the homeless migrant workers in the municipality, 97 out of around 200 people.

The cities worked with the Barka Foundation, which cares for Eastern European homeless people, for this initiative. Barka aid workers approached the migrant workers with the offer. Returning home sometimes feels like a defeat, but it is often their only real option, Larisa Meliceanu of Barka told Trouw. The Netherlands offers homeless migrants little legal assistance, and it is difficult to find new work from the streets.

“Everyone wants to be successful here. It is not that migrant workers are happy when they go back home,” Melinceanu told the newspaper. “Yet many decide to go back, to stop the further deterioration of their mental and physical condition.” The hope is that they can recuperate at home with their families. “But we transfer some migrant workers to aid organizations.”

Trade union CNV and the Salvation Army recently proposed this approach to homelessness among migrant workers, pointing to the success these six municipalities were having. The Barka Foundation and the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) also advocate expanding the approach to the rest of the Netherlands. The Cabinet will make a decision this spring.