Marcel Slockers

123 General discussion We have observed increasingly severe health problems and conditions among homeless people, in a shorter lifetime, as well as more interplay between the conditions. Homeless people do not die prematurely from homelessness but from treatable conditions. This is also true for other people living in deprived conditions. Further research is therefore needed on the correlation of health problems within certain groups of homeless people. Recognizing disease patterns that co-occur (syndemics) might prevent impending homelessness. 22 If good research is conducted among homeless people, these results can also be used for other vulnerable citizens who are not yet homeless, especially since there are indications that people with chronic health problems in particular, such as diabetes and thyroid diseases, are more likely to become homeless because of these conditions. Recommendations for research related to social legislation and uninsured issues Research into possible negative effects of the introduction of new social legislation is important. Homeless people are not a demarcated group but rather suffer from various problems. Not only do they have an accumulation of problems, they are also negatively affected by an accumulation of counterproductive social legislation (for example, the cost-sharing standard, schemes concerning debt problems, debt collection from the government). When the so-called cost-sharing standard was introduced, as a result of which housing someone else has consequences for one’s benefits, and excluding people from health insurance as soon as they no longer have an address, potentially adverse effects were not sufficiently taken into account. Research is also needed to analyse why restoration of these kinds of measures within the regulations is often slow. The Aanjaagteam, the special team for disoriented people, offers advice on this. It is important to investigate why vulnerable people who are disadvantaged by these kinds of mechanisms are not heard, with further exclusion as their fate. In chapter 7 , we describe the importance of experts by experience to demonstrate how regulation makes things worse. Some homeless people are literally on the pavement outside Rotterdam City Hall every day, despite not being registered in the municipal Personal Records Database. Further research into the effective- ness and privacy issues of linking data within a municipality to support vulnerable people, is of great importance here. Research into the success stories of municipalities in re-insuring the 22,000 reported people in 2020 with the Meldpunt Onverzekerd, the Contact Point for the Uninsured, is important. In Rotterdam, according to GGD Rotterdam, in 2018 only 30% were able to be insured