Amsterdam is famous worldwide for its liberal attitudes. Amongst its residents, it is more known for its shortage of housing. In the past decades, this problem has been solved by squatting. Nearly everyone I met in Amsterdam lives, or had once lived, in a squat. But with the social and political climate of the city changing, the attitude to squatting is also changing; to the disgust of some people, there is now an Anti-Squat Movement. I have always seen squatting as having outsider connotations—the bucking of an unfair system, a political statement, cockroaches and blocked toilets, dodging the police. But in Amsterdam it’s different. People live in squats for years, they are homes, their occupants legally registered with the government and paying the local version of council tax.
Any building left unoccupied for a year in Amsterdam is fair game for squatting. All you have to do is break in, take in a chair, a table and a bed, then call the police who come and register you at the address. A check is done to make sure the building has in fact been empty for a year, and it’s yours to live in. Now, the onus is on the owner to get you out.
Many of the buildings squatted are owned by the government: railway houses no longer used for signalmen houses acquired for road widening which has never happened. These are often the best to squat because the government is slow to move and, if the plans for new roads, railways etc. have been shelved, they have no use for the buildings.
The squat I spent time in was an old railway house next to a freight line. It was crooked and damp, so close to the tracks it initially felt like the trains were going to come through the wall, and, along with my friends, it housed mosquitoes the size of birds. Mind you, a lot of Amsterdam is plagued by bird mosquitoes. I only ever found citronella in the shops and it was humiliating to hear these insect-beasts laughing as they buzzed me all night. In the end, I had my sister send powerful mosquito coils from Australia which showed them! It might sound a bit of an overreaction but when you’ve spent a few nights thinking you’re about the be carried away by the winged monkeys from The Wizard of Oz, you’ll be desperately calling for Australian chemicals too.
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