A New Face of Homelessness
Marcel van de Ven, who founded Stichting Binnenslapers in Rotterdam, works directly with this overlooked group. He describes it as an almost entirely new category of need. Divorce, the end of a temporary lease, or a sudden life change can now be enough to push someone out of housing altogether, not because they've lost their job or fallen into addiction, but because there's nowhere for them to go.



Van de Ven estimates that Rotterdam alone is home to somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 people in this situation. That's a striking number for a group most people don't even realize exists.

He pushes back hard against the usual stereotypes.

Homelessness, he says, isn't only about people rifling through bins or struggling with substance abuse. Increasingly, it looks like ordinary working people who had their lives on track until, as he puts it, everything suddenly fell apart.

Part of the problem, according to Van de Ven, is that these individuals rarely qualify for municipal support.

Because they're employed, earn an income, and often still have friends or family around them, they're quickly labelled self-sufficient, and the conversation ends there. He argues that's exactly the wrong approach. Even two weeks without a home, he warns, can be enough to send someone into a downward spiral.

Clear thinking becomes difficult, daily life turns into pure survival, an.