Homeless in The Hague return to forests after NATO Summit to find tents gone
Homeless people who were removed from the forests near the World Forum in The Hague during the NATO summit have now returned to their camps, carrying vouchers to replace tents and other belongings that disappeared in the sweep. The measure has drawn criticism from advocacy group Straat Consulaat (Street Consulate), which called the situation “wrong and uncomfortable,” Omroep West reports.
According to Jan de Vries of Straat Consulaat, the gesture underscores the failure of the city’s homelessness policy. “All the discomfort about the summit and the approach to homelessness is contained in this compensation,” he told Omroep West. “It painfully reveals that there is very little left of the policy to tackle homelessness. The system to address homelessness through shelter and care is completely broken.”
In the weeks leading up to the summit, around 40 homeless people who were living in the Scheveningse Bosjes and the Haagse Bos were relocated by the municipality to a vacant school building on Haardstede. A state of emergency ordinance had prohibited them from remaining in the woods while world leaders visited The Hague.
At the same time, approximately 35 homeless families who had been placed in hotels were forced to vacate their rooms to make space for foreign guests. They were temporarily moved to other hotels in the region.
Now that the emergency order has ended and international delegations have departed, people are returning to the same places they stayed before. But with the forests cleared during the NATO summit, many discovered that their tents were lost.
The Salvation Army, which managed the temporary shelter in the school on behalf of the municipality, distributed vouchers from sporting goods retailer Decathlon to help replace missing items. “The vouchers are primarily intended so people can buy a tent if theirs got lost in all the chaos,” De Vries explained to Omroep West. “A comprehensible and humane gesture. This is basically the only thing that could still be done. No solutions have been found for these people, so this is an attempt to do something.”
He emphasized that the measure is not without irony, as The Hague’s municipal ordinance explicitly forbids sleeping outdoors. “The Algemene Plaatselijke Verordening (General Local Regulation) includes a provision that bans sleeping outside,” De Vries told Omroep West. “People are regularly fined for this in The Hague. So it’s only a matter of time before the first fines will be coming our way.” “The whole NATO circus is gone, it brought the city nothing, and homeless people are back to square one,” De Vries added.
Even for the homeless families still staying in hotels, conditions remain difficult. “Hotel shelter sounds like a kind of nice vacation,” De Vries told Omroep West, “but if you have to stay in a hotel room with multiple children for years, you can imagine that the vacation feeling disappears quickly.”
A spokesperson for the municipality called the vouchers “a noble gesture” by the Salvation Army. “Rangers indicated that these people might have lost belongings because they were moved to the NATO shelter,” the spokesperson said.
Regarding the ban on outdoor sleeping, the spokesperson stressed that the rule is intended to prevent recreational camping in parks, “not to punish vulnerable people.” The city said it operates a tolerance policy toward homeless individuals.
According to the spokesperson, the NATO shelter also created an opportunity to reach people who are typically hard to help. “Not everyone who was staying in the forests has gone back there,” he said. The city is still assessing how many people were offered additional help. “It is too early to say. We are now carrying out an inventory,” he said. “In any case, conversations have been held to guide people toward care, shelter, or their country of origin.”
De Vries argued that the contrast between the summit and the treatment of homeless people could not be clearer. “All that time, money, and energy for a prestige event that ultimately brought nothing to the city and its residents stands in stark contrast to the time, money, and energy we invest in addressing homelessness,” he told Omroep West. “The NATO summit painfully showed where things really stand.”
