In the late 1990s I starred in the play ‘Homeless Homeless’ by theater group Utrecht. The play was set at a day-care center for homeless people and gave a picture of the daily practice at a day-care center. My role was that of a supervisor at the shelter. The clients were played by former homeless people who played their own stories. It was in the news in those years and even the NPO program Zembla paid attention to it and followed the actors. We rehearsed every Thursday evening for a year and worked towards a premiere in the city theater in Utrecht.
‘When I was homeless, I often slept in backyards. Then I would secretly climb over the fence and sleep in a garden chair or on a bench. Sometimes even under the bedroom window of families I didn't know but would have liked to belong to for a while. Maybe then I would have learned what that's like, a home.’
In response to a message from the College of Human Rights about the ETHOS census being conducted since 2023, I found myself reflecting again on the performance and the stories of those with experience. That ETHOS count is an initiative since 2023 and gives a picture of the number of actual homeless people turns out to be much higher than the annual count by CBS.
‘I miss the country that was my home. We lived in the mountains, where I took care of my father, of the family. Life was good and I was happy, until I had to flee. The other day I drew my village. Our house. The animals. The plants. Our life. My heart cries. Everything I left behind can be seen on it. This is how I hold on to what I lost forever.’
After ‘Homeless Homeless,’ it appears that a lot has changed when it comes to the composition of the group of homeless people. Our cast consisted of only men, each with their own story as to why they had ended up on the streets. It starts with a traumatic experience followed by a reaction to forget this trauma as much as possible, often resulting in alcohol and/or drug addiction. What has stayed with me is that everyone had a personal story and missing or losing love was central to everyone. After all, how do you organize your life if you were never able to experience or learn to love? Or what happens to you when your romantic love rejects you and breaks off contact. That you get into a fight out of helplessness and are suddenly faced with a no-contact order? Losing a love through illness or accident can leave you wandering.
‘I never thought I would lose my home. Yet that's what happened. All I could do was cry, I had lost everything. Often the image came to mind of me as a little boy, high on my father's shoulders. Nothing could happen to me, looking out over the world. Knowing you are safe. That disappears as soon as there is no longer a home.’
The flight to avoid yourself and numb yourself is easily made when your future seems meaningless, and I am convinced that the pain you feel can make you choose to live in a stupor. The reward system of addiction can be so crippling, it keeps you away from the problems you have to solve. It makes ‘arranging your remedy’ become a day-long activity. This is a slippery slope and comes at the expense of all your reserves, until eventually you are willing to live without a roof over your head. You put everyone you love and know at a distance and you make yourself a victim of everything that has happened to you. Addiction, homelessness and victimization go hand in hand and this triangle relationship can go on forever. My fellow actors had spent years of their lives in this toxic relationship and each decided to break the situation. They chose to reconnect with themselves. and reconnect with the people they left behind.
‘When I dream of a home, I see me with my girlfriend. We have children. I hear their feet dribbling across the floor. They call to me because they need me. I will lovingly take them by the hand to discover what opportunities life offers and how to embrace them. Even if you did something wrong once. Because even then you deserve a chance.’
Wellness, meaning and connection is a desire and need that resides in all of us. It is a lack if you do not experience or have it. The road you have to travel is not easy, you really encounter yourself and circumstances regularly hold up a mirror to you. It is then difficult not to fall back into old habits. The reward monster behind your addiction lurks and tells you, ‘you're having such a hard time, you deserve something to forget for a while’ or ‘you're doing so well you deserve something to celebrate it.
‘It feels like I'm building a house of cards that keeps collapsing halfway through. No matter how many times I start over. Like the foundation under my existence is not quite level. Something like that. That foundation is a home. Without a home, it's a lot of work to develop yourself. And to be happy with who you see then.’
The choice to want to live differently always lies with yourself but it helps if you have people around you who show interest in who you are, what you can do, what you feel and what you want. A homeless person I pass on the street is also a confrontational mirror that tells me that this can happen to me too. Homelessness and/or homelessness has become more inclusive and diverse. The number of young people is growing, the number of single mothers and fathers are increasing, and a large number of exploited migrant workers end up on the streets. Housing is a human right and yet we expose people and children to a hard life, in all weathers. Or in the invisible world of couch-surfing with family, friends and acquaintances.
‘In my dreams I still come home sometimes. I'm five then. I see me running to the carousel in the playground. We romp, we have each other. But that was 65 years ago. After that, I've never been home. Nowhere. Home means EVERYTHING. Because if there is no home, there is nothing. All my life I searched for what was no longer there, but what meant everything to me.’
Housing is an important issue in today's society. That housing is a human right we seem to forget in conversations about building, nitrogen and efficiency. How can we as a society live together? So not cohabitation as a secluded activity with your partner. Am I able to share my home with someone who needs a roof over their head? And then am I willing to really share or do I remain the owner, the boss? What mutual alignment would be necessary to share a roof over your head? Asking myself these questions makes me realize that I am not quite ready to invite someone to live with me.
‘The coffee service. It's all I have left from home. When I hold it, I see myself as a little boy again. I smell the cows, the freshly cut grass. I feel the coziness, the carefree. I see my parents, my sisters, my brother. I hear us laughing. But the land where my home was no longer exists. It was shot to pieces in the war. Now Utrecht is my home. That's the place I miss as soon as I'm not there.’
So can we add accessibility for all to the common intention with every new housing initiative from the beginning? Where there is space for people who cannot contribute financially or otherwise for a while? And place with time and space needed to work on yourself? If all the beautiful and new initiatives I see sprouting around me add this to their principles then the world could become a good deal more beautiful again. I was recently at the Property Different Living festival, where the essence was that making land and property ‘their own’ can enable loving coexistence. How wonderful it would be if, in doing so, we also reached out to those outside our bubbles and offered them a place to grow and flourish together.
‘My husband suffocated me. He cut me off from everything and everyone around me. He isolated me because he was afraid I would leave him. I was humiliated, used. Now I am homeless, but I can finally live. I am free. Every day I meet kind people who see me and with whom I can share my story. I can breathe. I can grow. I am finally coming home.’
We performed the show ‘Homeless Homeless’ 22 times, besides being an actor I was also the driver of the players van. Those were special rides throughout the country and for some years after the performances I regularly ran into fellow actors. Now more than 25 years later, I don't see any of them and my thoughts are with them for a moment. I hope they have beaten their monsters and are under the weather. What I regret is that the issue of homelessness deserves more attention a quarter century later when we truly see housing as a human right.
Pieter Hessel
coexistence artist
‘The quotes come from stories from people who know what it is to have no home.’