In 2000 the Dutch city of Utrecht started with a new approach to deal with large number of homeless people and the problems it causes. The Utrecht city hall stimulated cooperation between all the different departments and organisations that are involved in helping and handling homeless people.
In many Utrecht neighbourhoods special hostels were set-up to house people without a roof above their head. In 2004 also Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague took over the new approach. Now Utrecht is proud to state that all the homeless are off the streets and most of them have a job or have other activities as a volunteer.
Even ‘Utrecht Underground’ is set up, a city tour led by ex-homeless that explain how life was on the streets, including visiting the locations in and under the Utrecht shopping centre Hoog Catherijne, where they slept and used drugs.
For this background reportage for the Austrian program ORF Weltjournal Featurez gave advice, did the research, set-up and planning of the filming, booked a camera crew, accompanied the filming and did translations.