I work from home, they work without a home
Hi! My name is Erle, and I am part of the data visualization team at Datawrapper. Today, I will write about a group of people that have been falling through the cracks for years: the working homeless.
Last week, I became a homeowner. I had been trying to find a new place to live for a while, following my decision to move back to the Netherlands from Italy. And while I am happy with my newfound house, I didn’t initially plan to buy, because of the stress and hassle that comes with the buying process. However, finding a place to rent was just impossible — every affordable listing that I could find had at least a hundred other people applying for a viewing. Since I am earning a higher salary than the average Dutch person, this made me wonder: how do people do it? How do they find a place to live?
And indeed, they don’t. Over the past years, Dutch news media have been reporting on a significant number of people in the Netherlands who have a job, but don’t have a place to call home. They might sleep in their car, in a tent, or on the couch of a friend or family member. The official Dutch term for them is “economisch dakloos” (plural : “economisch daklozen”, literally translated: economically homeless, though a more apt translation would be working homeless). But when I tried to find out how many people we are talking about here, I ran into a problem…
As can be seen from the above chart, while the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) releases statistics on homelessness each year, a likely significant amount of people is invisible in these numbers. This is because the CBS uses an estimation method¹ that is based on the registration of homeless people with three types of social support service: homeless shelters, social welfare, and rehabilitation programs. However, to be registered with these services, a person needs to be between the ages of 18 and 65. Moreover, homeless people with employment and without an addiction or severe mental health problems often don’t have access to shelters or homelessness-related social care, and they sometimes are registered at the address of a friend or family member, which also keeps them out of official estimates.
Crucially, “economisch daklozen” are deemed to be self-sufficient² and therefore not in need of help, given that they have an income. Many experts point to the bitter irony of this situation. Not having a home, not being eligible for help, and the shame and uncertainty that comes with this predicament, can cause these working homeless people — and their children³ — to sink deeper into an already miserable situation, be faced with deteriorating mental health, sometimes develop addiction, and to ultimately end up as a “visible homeless person”.
An especially vulnerable subgroup of working homeless people is made up of migrant workers. These are mostly people from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria who come to the Netherlands to fill the kind of important but low-paid, manual jobs that otherwise wouldn’t be filled. A 2024 study on homelessness found that they often don’t register with the municipality (for various reasons, sometimes because their employer doesn’t want them to), and that many municipalities don’t have the capacity or the motivation to seek them out. Many of these workers live in holiday homes, mobile homes, cars, their workplace, or on the street. When they live in housing provided by their employer, these rooms are often overcrowded and badly kept.
There is wide consensus that the Dutch housing crisis is the main reason that the group of “economisch daklozen” exists and has likely kept growing over the years⁴. And yet there is no solution on the horizon. Recently, a new law was introduced — the Wet betaalbare huur (Affordable housing law) — which, as the name indicates, was meant to protect people against rising rent prices. But instead of improving the housing situation for tenants, the law resulted in a lot of rental properties being sold, since selling became more profitable for private landlords than renting (indeed many people I spoke with during my hunt for a house referred to this law and warned me things were going to get tough). Although there are indications that the disappearance of these rental homes is compensated for by new houses that are built by larger commercial parties, so far the law doesn’t seem to have any positive effect — rather the opposite — for people looking for a place to rent.
I am fortunate enough to have been able to opt for buying in the end, and deal with the upfront costs that came with this decision. But many people are not. The apartment building that I live in now contains a lot of rented apartments that all have the same owner, and the real estate agent that acts as their intermediary told me that, because of this law, they are planning to gradually sell all those apartments. I wonder about all the people who currently live in those rented apartments. Are they still on a temporary rental contract? Will they have to move out in the near future? And if so, where will they go?
Hopefully workable solutions to the housing crisis will emerge in the near future, not only in the Netherlands, but also in the many other countries where this problem exists. Until then, I’m afraid my outlook on this issue remains rather pessimistic — I hope my colleague Margaux will bring you a more uplifting chart next week.
References and additional reading
The official Central Bureau of Statistics homelessness data on 1 January 2024
The 2024 ETHOS study on homelessness, which tries to go beyond CBS statistics
A 2022 report from Straat Consulaat with estimates about the total number of homeless people
A 2025 NPO podcast with more estimates about the total number of homeless
