Wijnand (51) is homeless. On the corner of Lange Lombardstraat he stares in disbelief at one of the most beautiful vacant buildings in The Hague. First Wijnand – a tall, eloquent man – lost his mother after a long illness. Then he lost everything: his mental health, his job as an IT manager and ultimately his house. Wijnand wants nothing more than to get his life back on track. Only: the waiting list for a new home is no less than five years.
It therefore pains Wijnand that the Sister House with its ornate stained glass windows and its lovely chapel has been empty since 2001. The 3,000 square meter building, where the nurses of the Westeinde Hospital used to live, is located in the center of The Hague. “Sixty apartments could fit here,” says Wijnand.
The Zusterhuis is one of the five nominated buildings to win the Hague ‘vacancy award’. This fun prize promotion is organized by the Achterban, a group of (former) homeless people, who are connected to the Straat Consulate, an interest group for the homeless. They want to call on property owners and the municipality to use vacant properties to help homeless people find a home.
“It is crazy that there are about 15,000 vacant buildings in The Hague, while more people than ever need a roof over their heads,” says advocate Sanne van Meggelen of the Straat Consulate.
Colleague Peter Bos therefore believes that the municipality should not focus exclusively on the construction of new homes. “It will take at least ten years to get new construction plans off the ground,” he says. ‘An existing building can be made habitable in one year.’
Broken windows and ugly graffiti
Van Meggelen, Bos and Wijnand stop in front of a dilapidated building on the Oude Haagweg. This used to be the office of Azivo, the health insurer that was merged into Menzis. The building has been vacant for thirteen years. Many windows are broken, the nailed-down wooden panels that are plastered with ugly graffiti tags offer a desolate appearance. According to the Houtwijk District Council, local residents prefer to walk around the block in the evening because of the drug deals that take place there. The old building would even serve as a finishing area.
The 2,500 square meter building is owned by the Van Herk Group, the organization of real estate magnate Aat van Herk. He owns approximately six thousand homes and, with an estimated capital of 2.1 billion euros, is number 15 in the Quote 500.
Peter Bos, a former squatter who has little interest in such capitalist excesses, shakes his head again. ‘Van Herk is probably not interested in the fact that the neighborhood is suffering as a result. New homes for homeless people could also be built here.’
Bos and Van Meggelen believe that the municipality should take a tougher approach to the owners of vacant properties. Bos suggests a vacancy ordinance, an obligation for property owners to report to the municipality if the property has been vacant for six months or longer. If they don’t, they risk a fine of thousands of euros. Amsterdam and Utrecht are currently experimenting with a vacancy ordinance. In the worst case and in the event of long-term vacancy, the municipality must even resort to expropriation, says Bos.
Through his spokesperson, housing councilor Martijn Balster (PvdA) responds that he is awaiting the results of the experiment in Amsterdam and Utrecht. But he finds expropriation difficult. Studies show that these are long, ineffective routes that cost a lot of capacity, he says. Balster emphasizes that the vacancy rate in The Hague has been successfully reduced in recent years from 7.2 percent in 2015 to 5.6 percent.
Police building
At the end of the afternoon Wijnand, Bos and Van Meggelen stand in front of the vacant building that hurts them the most. It is a police building on Jan Hendrikstraat, next to the police station, which has been virtually empty for about twenty years.
“Many homeless people experience this as painful,” says Van Meggelen. ‘They feel that the police are chasing them and easily handing out fines, but in the meantime they are leaving such a beautiful building vacant. And they therefore contribute to the problem.’
You can vote on the vacancy award until July. Wijnand hopes that the prize will draw attention to the housing shortage that he and other homeless people suffer from. “I’m only costing the municipality money now,” he says, “while I want to give something back to the community by working and paying taxes.” He takes another look at the vacant police building. “How can I go to work if I don’t even have a roof over my head?”
Reactions to property owners
The Haaglanden Medical Center, the owner of the Sister House, states in a written response that the vacancy award is a prize that they ‘would rather not win’. As a city hospital, they realize ‘what the lack of a permanent home address can do to a person.’ A small part of the building is already being used, including for five rental homes and an office space. In the coming years, the former sister house must be given ‘a new purpose’.
The police say that part of the building on Jan Hendrikstraat is used as a storage location. ‘The use of the other part of the building depends on the results of a study into the optimization of the housing of several police buildings in The Hague.’ The police say they are in discussions with the municipality about this.
The Van Herk Group did not want to respond to questions from de Volkskrant.
Tags: Homeless people Hague organize prize dire case vacancy costing municipality money
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