Homelessness

Problem

There are so many problems that led up to this that it's impossible for me to write out all of them. So I will pick the topics I think are the main contributors to homelessness.

Incompetent social workers

When you present yourself as being able to help people with autism, you're making a promise. A promise for which you are being handsomely paid (5000 euros per month in my case!). But what it ends up with is that there is no personalized approach. And if they fail or you tell them about it, you do not feel "helped." They are responding with: 'Hey, if you don't like it here, we are not forcing you to stay here'.

Utter incompetence is uttered by the following names (yes, public shaming incoming!)

• Thijs Waterink

• Netty Roelofs

• Lion Stijntjes

• Elselien Schippers

• Brian Aaldering

I've told them that if they are unable to assist me, they have the option and funds to hire outside assistance. Over the span of about 7 years, I've mentioned that over 30 times by saying it in their face, on the phone, by email, by letter, during a complaint commission investigation. I have tried it again and again and it just is not being accepted because it hurts their little ego's.

Their own ways of failing me and not willing to hire external expertise, even though I've mentioned an uncountable number of times that I'm not feeling helped, is a one-way ticket to an inevitable clash.

Framing

When I was living there, multiple incidents happened. Or rather, they have been made into incidents to victimize me and gain paper legitimacy to evict me. I want to recall three incidents.

The first is with Elselien Schippers:

I was in the kitchen, making a cup of tea. When eventually, Elselien (my personal mentor against my will) came in around the corner and started talking to me. I mentioned that my head was full and I did not want to talk. This was disrespectfully ignored by Elselien, at which point I only saw one way out, and that was to walk away. I wanted to walk past her, pet her gently on the shoulder, and say: "yeah, yeah" and begone. I only discovered 9 months later that Elselien had written in my personal report that I'd hit her and everybody in the team knew, except me.

The second is with an intern eventually upgraded to become a social worker (forgot her name at the moment):

The processing of postal pieces is really crappy in Woonzorgnet. Packages and letters go missing or get lost. So when I saw an unopened letter from the tax office on the ground just behind the entry door of the building, as a good citizen, I reported that to the social worker. Given the fact that this was going on, I wanted the social worker to mention what happened to the person who was the tax office letter. She didn't want to cooperate and just cover it up. I found this unacceptable and did not give the tax office letter to the social worker. Instead, I would walk to the person himself and tell the story.

But we're not there yet, because I knew this was going to happen. I first asked a totally different question (even hiding the tax office letter behind my back), which was if I could get down the stairs to change a broken lightbulb in my room. This was agreed upon and would be done immediately after the chat was over. With that said, let's revert back to the situation when I declared I would deliver the letter myself to the person it was addressed to in the building. The social worker put up serious resistance, demanding on all kinds of levels to give up that letter, and I was not having any of it. This went on for eight times, with me saying: "Stop it, the discussion is closed."

And then things became really bad because she started to blackmail me. See, you refused to open up the door where the ladder would be. If there's one thing you should never do, not to anybody, but in particular not to a person with autism, is turn back on your promise. This enraged me so much that I pulled the keys from her hands (which, because she was a girl of 160 cm, is not so hard to do with minimal force, unlocking the door. Grab the ladder, close the door again, give back the keys , and leave without saying your word. She, however, called me names, told me she would call the police and so on, whilst stamping out of the walkway.

The following day, all kinds of accusations were made that I had hit her, was verbally aggressive, and so on. When I asked: "And what accusations do you hold your colleague accountable for causing this?", they replied with "that's not the point here".

So these are just two examples of the plethora of incidents that happened that filled my personal report full of lies in an attempt to frame me. Some sort of conspiracy took place here because they couldn't deal with somebody that knew what he wanted to get help for his handicap.

Empty promises

I think the young adult section already lays out a good chunk of the story on empty promises. The municipality of Arnhem came into the picture. To be precise, WMO wijkteam de Lommerd, where my coaches were Andrew Breeveld and somebody else. They made all kinds of promises, like getting the first 2 hours of personal coaching per week extra, then it became 6 hours of personal coaching per week, but nothing came through. They even played out independent client support by not following up on what they had agreed to.

They knew the situation between Woonzorgnet and me was extremely volatile and all communication had totally broken down. It was even that bad that there was only one person in the building, which was a client himself that I got along with really well. He became the de facto diplomatic messenger between two armies during a massive standoff. Promised help to deescalate the situation never came. The situation further deteriorated (yes, it can get worse than this).

Results so far

So with all of the above, the situation became uncontrollable. They had already made plans to evict me, but they just didn't have sufficient legitimacy to do it just yet. Eventually, they found the stick to punish me by stating I had no indication anymore after I tried to get PGB on top of ZIN to get out of the deadlock, but the PGB was rejected and I therefore also automatically lost my ZIN indication, which allowed me to live at Woonzorgnet.

What followed was half a year of total agony. With each passing day, the eviction becomes a reality. All the healthcare parties failed us. I fell bedridden (paralyzed due to a long-term autistic meltdown) due to the situation that my dad had to take off for a month from work to drive 200km down every day to help me take care of stuff.

Papers were signed for the application of a peaceful transition to a new place where I could live. And although we were on time sending the papers to Andrew Breeveld (required in the process), he was not on time sending them through. But instead of taking the blame, he blamed it on us that we were not on time. We have proven he is lying, but I have not been able to make it into a court case just yet because homelessness happened.

And this messed me up forever. I now go through life with C-PTSD that is 2 years later, still not treated because homeless people are not being helped and waitinglists are over a year. I suffer daily and it has totally destroyed my life.

Because it's such a complicated situation, I've created a real-time diagram where you can follow all the steps that I've taken to get things solved. In reality, nothing is solved. I am truly stuck. I'm not being heard, I'm not being taken seriously, and this unjust situation has already haunted me for 10 years.

Final thoughts

There are no words to describe how bad this is. The healthcare industry and everybody in that chain have totally failed me. Not even reforms would do justice to the suffering I went through and, as of today, am still going through. The whole system of ZIN has to be dismantled and everybody should be given a personal healthcare budget (PGB) instead. Payment has to be delivered on the result, not upon effort.