What Amsterdam’s government can’t accomplish – but I might – I'm a globetrotting researcher and activist

Update 5 April 2025: The Filet-o-fish is now 2.50 instead of 2 but the cheeseburgers are still 1.95 and a regular hamburger is 1.80

I’ve been looking into some things, sparked by several people – Dutch and foreign – having asked me for food or coins, often at the same location and early in the morning, plus Dutch local governments basically spending a heck of a lot of money to find excuses so they can disgustingly continue to do nothing at all for non-Dutch EU citizens who got lured here with a combination of work and “housing” through atrocious agencies and then dumped in the streets.

For max EUR 2000 per person per year, I could do the following:

Give the person a 2-euro cheeseburger or filet o’fish and a tea or coffee every morning between 7 and 8, 365 days a year
Do laundry for them every two weeks
Give them access to showers through a gym membership
Comes without any allergy guarantees. That makes sense. People with severe allergies can reach out and we can find a tailormade solution for them.

I also want to hand out Mylar emergency blankets for the winter season. Unlike shelter suits, they are not bulky and not heavy (and reusable). They can cost as little as a euro. (Does need to be managed/monitored. We want no blankets as waste all over the place, but homeless people don’t want to draw attention to themselves so I think that this would mostly work well. I could have drop-off points where we can refold blankets for those who find them hard to handle. Collect them? Solution is doable in any case.) (Do I, literally, want to do this? Not necessarily. I’m a catalyst. I get things going and then I step back. If it does not run without me, then there simply isn’t enough support – draagvlak – and it shouldn’t depend on me.)

Shall I start a crowdfunding campaign?

(I think I should, yes. There is enough goodwill among the inhabitants of Amsterdam.)

There are other aspects that I want to take care of such as storage. What are bag ladies and shopping cart pushers? Not “hoarders” as I’ve seen it called, but people who have no place to keep their things. I can imagine walls or blocks with key card or code-controlled free lockers distributed throughout the city – which would be ideal but relatively expensive – but it might be easier (debatable) to collect stuff with a van in the morning and drop it off in the evening. A good compromise might be local shops making some space available for local homeless people; it would also be good for community-building.

I also need at least one real estate giant or property developer or whatever you are to help develop capsule housing. Prevention and remediation. Simples. It ain’t rocket science. (Frans, verdomme. De witst beiter. Eg waal. Effe un anger mutsjke op dunne kop doehu en effe een kleen bietje angush kiekuh.) Failing that, I’d probably love to look into some kind of foldable shelter that protects against wind and rain. Needs to be stored on-site or to be dropped off and collected.

Homelessness is mostly about MONEY, not about not having a home. That’s just a consequence, albeit a bloody impractical one.

The difference between the two people on either side of the camera is merely money. Along with money also come people who can can pull strings for you when you need it.

Homelessness in Amsterdam

Where the money goes

It goes into reports such as this one and into all the meetings and research and into the development of tools and checklists by external consultancies.

Het geld gaat ipv naar de mensen die het nodig hebben naar rapporten zoals het “inmiddels beroemde Roemer-rapport” en de vele andere peperdure onderzoeksrapporten en tools en checklists (zie alleen al de refs in dit rapport zoals hieronder) met alle bijbehorende geldverslindende vergaderingen en buitenlandreisjes

Die eerste twee refs, dat is wetenschappelijk onderzoek en dat telt niet in dit kader, maar de andere refs, dat is waar bakken met geld naartoe zijn gegaan.

Zie ook dit: https://www.bnnvara.nl/joop/artikelen/daklozen-mogen-blijkbaar-meedoen-maatschappij

Begin april gaan alle onderzoekers weer met een lampje onder alle bruggen en op alle bouwplaatsen en in alle portieken en bosjes en op alle woonkamerbanken en in alle vakantiehuisjes en schuurtjes, auto’s en boten kijken om vast te stellen hoeveel mensen er nu echt volgens de BRP niet ergens “wonen”. Daar zijn ze nu al sinds 2005 mee bezig en duidelijk nog geen steek mee opgeschoten want we zijn nu twintig jaar verder: https://www.kansfonds.nl/programmas/telling/veelgestelde-vragen-over-de-ethos-telling/

145 x 2000 = EUR 290,000 per year for very basic support for the most unfortunate EU citizens (like myself, btw).