# Cities want €100m more a year to shelter homeless people

> The four big cities and the G40 Stedennetwerk say municipalities fall tens of millions of euros short each year on sheltering homeless people, a legal duty, as parliament debates homelessness on Wednesday.

Housing · published 2026-11-11 07:31 · https://nlnow.nl/a/cities-ask-state-for-100m-more-a-year-for-homeless-shelter/

The four big cities and the G40 Stedennetwerk have called on the central government to provide at least €100m extra every year to shelter homeless people. They say so in a letter to the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of parliament.

Municipalities need more financial help from the central government, the cities write, because they now fall tens of millions of euros short every year. Sheltering homeless people is a legal duty for municipalities. The Tweede Kamer debates possible solutions to homelessness on Wednesday.

“Homelessness has been a growing problem for years,” the municipality of The Hague (Den Haag) writes. Despite that, it says, the contribution to a solution “has not kept pace”.

A home is the main way out of homelessness, The Hague says. But action plans to provide homes will take years to deliver results, so the municipalities want more financial support to provide shelter in the meantime.

**€100m**: The minimum extra amount per year the cities ask the central government to provide for sheltering homeless people

## Background

- **Tweede Kamer**: The House of Representatives, the lower and more powerful house of the Dutch parliament. Its 150 members are elected directly; it can amend bills and holds the cabinet to account.
- **G40 Stedennetwerk**: The G40 Stedennetwerk is a network of 40 Dutch municipalities, mostly medium-sized and large cities, that cooperate to put shared urban concerns on the agenda of the national government. Through joint letters and meetings, the member cities’ mayors and aldermen seek national policy and funding that matches the challenges cities face, such as housing, social care and public order.

From NLnow, news from the Netherlands in English. How stories are made: https://nlnow.nl/about/