Amsterdam mayor wants to scrap fines for sleeping outdoors

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema wants to decriminalise sleeping outdoors, despite objections from residents of the Plantage neighbourhood in the east of the city.

Residents have launched a petition to prevent that from happening, according to AT5. Sleeping on the street or in parks is technically a fineable offence, although in practice no one has been fined over the past year. The mayor now wants it to become official policy.

Plantage resident Dennis de Vreede, who supports the petition, said he fears scrapping criminal liability will lead to more people sleeping outdoors, more nuisance and less possibilities for official action – despite acknowledging that fines are pointless.

“These people cannot afford it and might end up in even more debt trouble,” he told AT5. “But the entire legal framework collapses, meaning the police can no longer take action at all.”

“Shameful” fines

Halsema called fining sleeping homeless people “shameful” in 2021 and has said the measure doesn’t even work. “The intention is that the fine will bring about a change in behaviour,” she wrote, but she questioned whether it actually reduces nuisance.

From 2021 to 2024, fines were only issued for nuisance resulting from sleeping outdoors. Some 1,800 fines were handed out in that period.

But Bianca Koster of the Rainbow Group agrees that fining has little effect. “It helps to address the visibility, but not the core of the problem,” she said.

What needs to be addressed, she said, is why people end up on the streets. She called for more shelters, more care and more housing.

“I understand that when it gets visibly worse, people think we have to do something,” she said. “But punishing people is not the way.”