<
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/26/amsterdam-dutch-squatter-wars-homeowners-property>
"The late Dutch author and Holocaust survivor Marga Minco once wrote about an
empty house in Amsterdam where she and a group of artists and students took
refuge towards the end of the second world war. Last month, the house she lived
in for decades was squatted by a new generation of the dispossessed. In the
Dutch capital’s overpriced, overcrowded housing market, where homes fetch more
per square metre on average than they do in London, the squatters, or
krakers, are back.
They are the byproduct of a crisis that has spiralled out of control, in which
growing anger is justifiably focused on a startling and unsustainable
unfairness. The cost of the country’s generous tax breaks for homeowners, who
make up more than half of the population, is being borne by hard-working
tenants. The return of squatting is a symptom of a public mood that is
increasingly furious about the lack of solutions. And with a general election
on 29 October, it is an anger that could be politically decisive.
Squatting was made a criminal offence in the Netherlands, partly in response to
the Vondelstraat riots of 1980, during which military tanks rolled on to the
streets for the first time since the second world war to battle the squatters.
But barely a month goes by now without reports of riot police being called in
to clear another squat.
In June, riot police emptied one such property in the De Pijp district of
Amsterdam, a neighbourhood the tourist guides call bohemian and charming. The
squatted premises had previously lain empty for more than two years. A few days
after Minco’s former home was squatted, another on the Plantage Kerklaan was
cleared by riot police. The confrontational mood should come as no surprise to
the authorities when the number of property “millionaires” has never been
greater, at the cost of taxpayers and a generation priced out of the housing
market."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
