I was a young high school student when it happened. I was in seventh grade or maybe second year, I don’t remember exactly. My father became homeless. It was not going well financially, so he lost his shop and upstairs apartment in the city center of Maastricht. Today we would call him an economically homeless person. I lived with my mother.
I wrote for it a few months ago OneWorld a much read article about it. Actually, that was only the first time I spoke about it in public. I thought it was exciting to write about it, and thought for a long time whether I should do it.
Many of my friends were surprised, they were completely unaware that my father had ever been homeless. Friends I knew well at the time were also surprised. That is not surprising. As a young teenager, I was ashamed of my homeless father. I felt my father had failed, and I thought it would reflect negatively on me. I therefore kept it hidden as much as possible.
I knew he could often be found at Plein 1992. When I was with friends, I tried to avoid that place to avoid running into each other. When I went for a bike ride with my father, I hoped not to meet anyone. I was sorry that I could not ‘just’ meet at his house.
In time, my father recovered. He found a job and was able to get priority for a social rental apartment. But even then, when his period of homelessness was over, I kept silent about it. I was deliberately vague about that period.
My shame does not stand alone. There is a lot of stigma surrounding homelessness. It still feels uncomfortable to write about it from my personal experience. From my role as a scientist writing feels a lot safer. Still, I think it’s important to do. After all, the personal is political.
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For me it is a way of showing that homelessness is not some abstract and marginal phenomenon. It happens to those around us – people with friends, with children, with families. Homelessness not only affects the homeless, but also turns the lives of all those close to it upside down.
Moreover, I think the individual shame I felt as a young teenager should give way to collective shame. In other words, homelessness is not the result of individual failure, but of a failing system that leaves vulnerable people in the lurch.
According to the most recent figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, there were about 40,000 homeless adults in the Netherlands in 2018, doubling compared to 2009. Moreover, these are conservative estimates, all indications that the actual numbers are even higher. These numbers are quite a lot reality check for anyone who believes that prosperity in the Netherlands is distributed fairly.
That shocking increase is really not the individual fault of all those people. Plus, even if you’ve messed up, you just keep the right to a decent home. The right to housing is enshrined in the Dutch constitution.
Homelessness is a widespread and above all structural problem. Many of us know someone who is involved directly or indirectly.
If we really want to see homelessness as a structural rather than an individual problem, we need to get rid of the stigma attached to it. We have to take the shame away from the individual and resign it to politicians, so that they finally come up with a decent approach.
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