BOND PRECAIRE WOONVORMEN

Speaker BPW at solidarity demo We are here.

Hundreds of sympathizers show support in Amsterdam

On April 28, hundreds of sympathizers attended the solidarity demo for we are here in Amsterdam. From Kruger Square they marched in procession to D. Meyer Square. Our BPW employee Pieter, among others, was on the podium. He spoke the following words.

” My name is Pieter and I am active for the Bond Precaire Woonvorm, a group that fights against the flexibility of housing. Since the campus contract of 2006, there has been a proliferation of temporary leases in the Netherlands. These are contracts where sooner or later you lose your tenancy rights so that a homeowner can make you homeless for no reason. There is no need to arrange replacement accommodation and no relocation costs to be reimbursed.

Speech BPW

One of those contracts is the anti-squat contract, the contract that Ymere now wants to use via Camelot for the homes in Rudolf Dieselstraat. With this contract, Ymere not only takes away from the residents the tenancy rights, but also the right to privacy and peace in the house. For example, Camelot employees may enter your room at any time and you must adhere to a laundry list of house rules. If you don't follow any of these rules, Camelot will use it to pressure you even further. Smoking in your room, an unmade bed: enough to be threatened with eviction. Having children is prohibited. If you do become pregnant, you will end up on the street with your newborn child.

Meanwhile, half of the new contracts offered in Amsterdam are temporary, as a result of which an increasing group of residents move through Amsterdam as flex nomads, while they find themselves in a permanent state of uncertainty. Housing associations hire mafia organizations such as Camelot that give residents the choice: surrender your rent rights or sleep on the street. It is no longer an emergency solution and will not solve the housing shortage. In fact, the housing shortage is being used to deprive more and more residents of the rights and meanwhile the residents are being blamed for the housing shortage. We who live too big, too cheap, too close to our work in a neighborhood that is too hip. We who should not actually live in the city, but in the surrounding municipalities and preferably outside. Long live gentrification. But it is political decisions that have led to the housing shortage. A housing shortage that is used by the same politicians to set groups of residents against each other. Everyone steps down and at the bottom are the refugees.

It is not the refugees who are taking the homes, but the politicians who are taking their rights on our behalf and not just theirs, but our own as well. What we have to realize in Amsterdam, but also in the rest of the Netherlands, is that it is human rights that are being taken away from the We Are Here groups, and that those rights are not only rights that apply to all of us, but also ours. all are. So it's not just the rights of the We Are Here groups that are being violated here, but also our rights, the rights of all of us. And it is therefore our responsibility as a city, as a society, to demand these rights.

We need to get rid of the idea that when someone is evicted, that is that person's problem, that when someone is thrown out on the street, it is the individual's failure. When someone ends up on the street, it is the failure of us as a society, of society, the failure of the political system.

And that is why it is necessary to come together in solidarity to show as here today that we are here, that we are here to claim our rights. Demands because there is no room for discussion, this is about basic rights and you don't make any concessions on basic rights.

Peter ”

Website We are here.

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