01 March 2026
The elections for the local councils are coming up, so it is time for housing protests to keep the important subject high on the agenda.
I don’t know how they do it in Amsterdam, but apparently there are 22,000 buildings not in use. This is more than enough to house all homeless people, in the broadest use of the terminology, in the city.
The protest took the form of a city tour. During the walk, various speakers representing many different organisations, addressed the issues.
One of the topics was empty shops. Not the small street-level shops; they will find a new tenant quickly. No, the big shops. Like the former V&D. A nice multi story building in the center, but left empty for ten years already. That could have already been a lot of apartments by now. Or Magna Plaza, the former main post office, which was transformed to a shopping centre. Nobody wants to open shop on the top two floors anymore, so they remain empty. In the north of Amsterdam it is even worse. A brand new hotel never opened.
To make the problem visible, the website www.wastedspaces.org was setup. You can find empty buildings around the country and report ones that are not yet on the list!
The housing corporations are also not doing very well. They do not care enough about their properties when mold is reported, causing health problems. They keep selling social housing. The team of Niet te Koop (“Not for Sale”) continues to protest against this behavior. Not only housing corporations sell properties, the universities in Amsterdam do the same. What will replace the students? That could be an office or ,worse, another hotel. It will not become student housing.
There is something I do not understand: why do people queue to get a portion of fries from a specific shop? Because of social media the queues are ridiculous. This drives up the rent prices for shopkeepers in the area and it will force shops to close or move to another part of town. The shop they leave behind will be filled with the next tourist focused business. This doesn’t make the neighborhood a nicer place to live.
Against all the buildings that are left empty on purpose, there is just one thing to do… squat them! The tour stopped at former squat Hotel Mokum for poetry. During the tour there was already plenty of police to ensure the protest march could pass safely through town. But around Hotel Mokum there was a lot of extra police. They were probably afraid we would take the building back.
There is also a little good news. There are many teams who are working on creating their own housing corporation. Not for profit, but for the people to live.
A protest without music is hard to imagine. In front the Paradiso, a church turned into a the best place to enjoy a concert, which started it’s current life as a squat, it was time for music. The band De Bovendanen, all the way from Dordrecht, played a small set on the portable stage. The stage was dragged through town so the band and all speakers were seen and heard loud and clear. After their Paradiso set, De Bovendanen played a lot more while riding the car.
Many organisations helped to organise the protest. They are all mentioned on the Woonprotest Linktree. Click here!
Click on the photos to enlarge them
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