What did you do during the day? Is it deserved that I feel ashamed when I say no to a homeless person asking for money? Have you slept on the TU/e campus before? Would you have sought help sooner if it had become more difficult for you to live on the streets?

The participants don't stop asking questions, but Roland and Martijn enjoy it. They call themselves 'route walkers' in 'the concrete jungle', and they gladly tell as much as possible about their experiences. "We want to make people aware of the situations that homeless people find themselves in, and it also helps me with my recovery," says Roland. He found his way back through getting clean (five times!) and opportunities that came his way at the right time. He now lives in a group home from the charity ‘Ervaring die staat', and he works as a volunteer at KDET, the sounding board for homeless people in Eindhoven.

Experience

The tour guides request the participants not to use their phones and to refrain from drinking water during the tour to simulate the experience of not being able to do so anymore. The weather is amazing today, but they would have asked the participants not to use their umbrellas if it had been raining.

Roland tells at the indoor garden of the Kennispoort that he often used crack here. “I was addicted to base coke, and no one could see me here behind this staircase. I was so afraid of others; I didn’t trust anyone and I was also so embarrassed.” Were you ever sent away? “No, because I always kept it tidy. Since I kept it clean, they wouldn’t notice that I had been here.”

The TU/e terrain is very appealing to homeless people. Martijn explains that every homeless person quickly learns that the police cannot send you away from here. Just like Roland, he had used drugs in the past. It began when he was a student and started blowing daily “with the wrong friends” until their mothers kicked their sons out of their home. Both have got clean, save for an occasional blow. Both of them have also never slept on the campus, by the way.

Daytime activities

On the way to the Centrale Inloop of the salvation army at the Visserstraat, the men tell that they were busy trying to get drugs during the daytime. Roland put a lot of time into shoplifting, often on the order of his dealers. Martijn got his money by lying to his insolvency administrators, claiming that his bike was stolen again or that he had to go to a friend's funeral.

‘t Eindje is a night shelter on the Mathildelaan. It is the first place you go to if you can’t solve it yourself anymore. “You actually don’t want to be there. There are many confused people,” says Roland. But positive-minded as he is, he can also look at it differently: “’t Eindje is the beginning of something new.”

The stories are exciting, and the listeners are hanging onto their every word for different reasons. One person wants to find a future in addiction treatment, while the other wants to mean something to the foodbank after their retirement. Florine Westen and Serra van Santen, two second-year students of Industrial Design, want to design from the human dimension and not from a bubble. A PhD student of Technology, Innovation & Society lives almost next door to a drop-in center for the homeless called ‘t Hemeltje and is interested in their voice. Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences alumnus Rik Verhalle works at Eindhoven 365, and he needs to promote the city with everything that is fun and exciting. "But I would also like to learn about the other side of things. I remember learning at the TU/e how to design buildings that would prevent homeless people from staying there."