Residents’ committee Red Amsterdam Noord fights with neighborhood plan against dichotomy
After many demonstrations, a neighborhood review with the full council of B&W and a hearing, residents’ committee Red Amsterdam Noord now presented a solid neighborhood plan to the municipality. They demand an investment in the neglected working-class neighborhoods and in their residents who do not benefit from urban renewal. “The dichotomy is only getting bigger,” says the action group.
“The balance has been lost,” says Eva Bollen of Red Amsterdam Noord. She lives in the Vogelbuurt herself and has been fighting for better living conditions in her neighborhood for more than ten years. She sees beautiful apartment buildings being erected all around her, but she herself lives in a non-insulated social rental home where, as she says herself: the wind is howling through the cracks. “We are not against new construction and new residents, but the dichotomy is only getting bigger”.
opposites
After a battle for the attention of the city council, the residents’ group now seems to be gaining ground. The support of mayor Halsema, who received the plan, has been received. Halsema: “Extra homes are being added everywhere. This is very visible in Noord. That is the most important task.”
“Officials still work for the driver, not for the residents. That has to change”
But it is not Halsema, but the aldermen and their officials who will carry out the plans. Rood Amsterdam Noord is critical of Jakob Wedemeijer, the new SP alderman for Housing. Eva Bollen: “They have to hold the housing associations more closely to their performance agreements about, for example, maintenance. The difficult thing is that they are not judged per corporation on their performance, but collectively. The good performance is sufficient.”
big money
Bollen also believes that there should be a stop to the sale of social housing for big money. “Renovate them for the residents themselves, who now have to leave their neighborhood to be able to live affordably. Social housing is also being built, but too few. The studios are often thirty square meters that are also rented out temporarily.” Alderman Wedemeijer van Wonen has an overview of social housing to be purchased by the municipality. But, he says, “I can’t promise this period.”
When asked by the residents after all these years, something has been achieved, Bollen has to think for a while. Yes, she says. “But it’s going very slowly. Civil servants still work for their administrators, but not for us residents. That has to change.”
A promise: In April, the renovation of the first block of social housing in the Vogelbuurt will start. The tenants can return to their homes.
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