Amsterdammers find themselves at the nadir of a Europe-wide housing shortage. But some bold initiatives offer hope
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It started maybe 10 years ago, says Tamara Kuschel. Since the 1970s, the charity she works for in Amsterdam, De Regenboog, has run day shelters for homeless people – typically, people with serious addiction and mental health issues.
Then, in about 2015, a new kind of client began to appear. “They didn’t have the usual problems of homeless people,” Kuschel says. “They had jobs, friends. In every respect, their lives were very much together. But they couldn’t afford a home.”
