Last year at least 700 people who had been doing temporary jobs in the Netherlands were helped to return to their homes in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, Trouw reported on Wednesday.

A number of cities across the country have schemes in place to help unemployed or troubled labour migrants to return home, the paper said. Some did not have enough money to pay for a ticket, others were in poor health or struggling with addiction.

Larisa Melinceanu, from the Barka foundation which helps homeless Eastern Europeans, said returning home can sometimes feel like failure, even though it is often the only way out.

“Everyone wants to be a success here,” she told the paper. “Labour migrants are not happy to go home. But many of them choose to do so to stop further deterioration of their physical and mental health.”

The 700 bus and train tickets so far were paid for by the Dutch state, and ministers will decide this spring whether or not to continue funding.

At the beginning of 2024, an estimated 33,000 people were living rough, in their cars, a holiday home, a squat or at shelters, compared to 27,000 in 2022 and 30,000 in 2023, national statistics agency CBS said last month.

In particular, there has been an increase in the number of homeless people from Eastern Europe, who now account for 8% of the total, rather than 5%. They often find themselves with nowhere to live when a temporary employment contract ends because staffing agencies are still linking jobs to accommodation.