1 IN 3 HOMELESS IN AMSTERDAM IS WOMAN

"Women are very good at hiding"

In Amsterdam, thirty percent of adult homeless people are women. This is according to the latest homeless census. 53-year-old Inga is one of them. "I thought I was the only woman sleeping on the streets."

Inga's homeless story begins seven years ago with a disturbing phone call from her son. Inga cannot recount it without tears: "'Mom. I'm not doing well, please come to me.'"

The family lives in England, but is originally from Latvia. "In Latvia there was no work," Inga explains the move to England. But in England, things went wrong. "My son started using."

When he goes to Amsterdam, everything gets worse. She finds him on the street: dope sick and completely panicked. She takes him in his arms and hopes to find help. She doesn't find it. "I lay down next to him and fell asleep. We lived like that for years, on the streets. We slept under bridges. Every morning we woke up crying, mother and son."

Inga looks at her hands and tells how her son was arrested for theft and had to serve time. From then on, she was on her own and terrified. "The street is no place for a woman. Sleep succeeded only when I was 'away.' I mean: when I was taking drugs. I was offered it by someone who also lived street: here, take some, then you will sleep well."

"For my son, I have to be strong"

In the years that Inga slept on sleep, she was robbed a few times, noted by people who were homeless themselves. "I would never do that, but I don't judge. I know how hard it is when you have to live on the streets and use drugs. You lose your dignity, your standards, everything. I also started stealing to get money. At stores. Tony's Chocolonely at Albert Hein, there's a market for that. I ended up getting caught and stuck like my son. My sister and brother didn't want to see me anymore. My father died. I had no one left at all except my son. I started thinking about my life and wanted to end it when I got out and ended up back on the streets, but then I thought about my son. We can't both slip away. For him, I have to be strong."

A walk-in centre is often a last safety net, but also a first step.

For help, she knocked on the door of De Regenboog Groep. The Amsterdam-based organization has been serving homeless people for 50 years, and has ten walk-in centres spread throughout the city and one in Zaanstad. A walk-in centre is often a last safety net, but also a first step. About 550 homeless people use the walk-in centres on a daily basis. Women make up 10% of the total number of visitors to the walk-in centres.

Inga is often the only woman at AMOC, the walk-in centre on Stadhouderskade in Amsterdam, where she comes daily. "For a long time I thought I was the only woman sleeping on the street, but I found out that there are quite a lot of them. You just don't see them. Women are very good at hiding."

There is a lot of hidden homelessness among women

Homelessness among women is often not visible. In Amsterdam, only four percent of homeless women sleep in public spaces; most of them are forced to stay on the couch with family or acquaintances. They are often economically homeless. Economically homeless people cannot use social shelter because they are considered capable of solving their problems themselves. They are self-reliant. Yet among them there are people with multiple problems. In addition to (threatened) homelessness, they have, for example, psychological problems, conflicts with a (former) partner or debts.

In 2024, Evelien Kamminga conducted research on hidden homelessness among women during her Master's in Social Work. She spoke with ten women between the ages of 32 and 73. "They all have different life stories," she writes in her research report, "but have one thing in common: they are economically homeless. The causes are diverse: relationship breakdown, domestic violence, sexual abuse, poverty, illness or migration. What is striking is that these women consciously avoid the streets and shelters, often out of fear of (sexual) violence. Instead, they seek refuge in informal networks, which makes them invisible in official statistics."

Amsterdam has 11,352 adult homeless people, 3,453 of whom are women

For years, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) has been making estimates of the number of people who are homeless. Those estimates are based on people who are registered somewhere. This produces a distorted picture, because not everyone seeks help. EHTOS includes people who are not registered in the count.

ETHOS stands for European Typology of Homelessness and Housing Exclusion and was developed at the Catholic University (KU) Leuven in 2006. The method assumes a one-day census in a municipality or region. Employees of organizations that come into contact with homeless people complete questionnaires on the day of the census. In addition to social relief organizations, welfare organizations, family doctors, schools, experience experts and volunteer initiatives also participate, so that less visible groups are also counted.

On April 8, 2025 Amsterdam participated in the ETHOS count for the first time, the results of which were announced on October 8. The count showed that Amsterdam has 13,070 homeless people, 1,718 of whom are children. Of the 11,352 adult homeless, 7,215 are male and 3,453 are female. Of males, 17% sleep in public housing compared to 4% of females. Most women (1,442) sleep with family, friends or third parties, followed by a temporary homeless shelter (597 women) and non-conventional housing, such as a garage (mobile home) or squat (531 women).