A million people sleep on our streets
13 February 2025
"Could you please spare some money so I can sleep at the shelter tonight?" You'll likely hear this question around Amsterdam's train stations, and the chances of hearing it have only increased in recent years.
The number of homeless people is on the rise, both in the Netherlands and across Europe. Right now, an estimated 890,000 people sleep rough or in a homeless shelter on any given night across the EU – twice as many as in 2009. This figure does not paint the full picture, as many people remain uncounted due to missing data.
The main drivers of the increase seem to be a lack of affordable housing and inflation, making it harder for people on low incomes to survive. Migrant workers from EU countries in Central and Eastern Europe also increasingly end up on the streets.
"The biggest problem is the agencies that recruit these workers from poorer regions, offering them a package deal with a job, housing, transport and health insurance," explains social worker Maia Paduraru from Stichting Barka to The European Correspondent.
However, many of these workers end up with zero-hour contracts, meaning they can be fired from one day to the next. When that happens, they lose everything at once, because their housing is usually tied to their employment. Not speaking the language makes things even harder.
"It's painful to see how vulnerable they are becoming as they depend on these agencies. For Romanians, returning home with nothing is too shameful, so they stay and face homelessness," Paduraru says. In the Netherlands, these agencies have free rein, while Belgium and Germany have slightly stricter rules when it comes to contracts for EU migrant workers.
 | Julianne van Pelt Finland is one of the only few countries where the number of homeless people is actually decreasing. This can mainly be explained by their 'Housing First' approach, in which the first priority is providing a roof over someone's head to address health and social problems. In most countries, this is done the other way around, with housing coming at the end of the integration process instead of being part of the integration. |
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