Phot ocopiable • can be downloaded from website macmillan Publishers Ltd 2013 Liberal Amsterdam plans to create ‘scum villages’ Level 2

 
havoc slum evict harassment intimidating
scum offender 
access 
antisocial 
 
troublemaker

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NEWS LESSONS / Liberal Amsterdam plans to create ‘scum villages’ / Intermediate
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 Liberal Amsterdam plans to create ‘scum villages’ 
Level 2
Intermediate
Liberal Amsterdam plans to create 
‘scum villages’
Amsterdam has a reputation as a liberal city, but 
now it has announced a scheme to
house antisocial families in converted
shipping containers.
Patrick Barkham
4 December, 2012
1 To tourists, Amsterdam still seems very 
liberal. Recently the city’s Mayor assured 
them that the city’s marijuana-selling coffee 
shops would stay open despite a new 
national law to prevent drug tourism. But 
the Dutch capital’s plans to send nuisance 
neighbours to “scum villages” made from 
shipping containers may damage its 
reputation for tolerance.
2 The Mayor, Eberhard van der Laan, says his 
controversial new £810,000 policy to deal 
with antisocial behaviour is to protect victims 
of abuse and homophobia. The camps, 
where antisocial families will be rehoused 
for three to six months, have been called 
“scum villages” because the policy is similar 
to proposals from Geert Wilders, the far-right 
politician, who last year said that “repeat 
offenders” should be “sent to a village
for scum”.
3 Bartho Boer, a spokesman for the Mayor, 
says that the plans are not illiberal. “We 
want to defend the liberal values of 
Amsterdam,” he says. “We want everyone 
to be who he and she is – whether they are 
gay and lesbian or resist violence and are 
then victims of harassment. We as a society 
want to defend them.” According to Boer, 
the villages are not for “a problem neighbour 
who has the stereo too loud on Saturday 
night” but “people who are extremely violent 
and intimidating and in a clear situation 
where a victim is being harassed again
and again”.
4 People found guilty of causing “extreme 
havoc” will be evicted and put in “basic” 
temporary homes, including converted 
shipping containers in industrial areas of the 
city. “We call it a living container,” says Boer. 
Housing antisocial families in these units, 
which have showers and kitchens
and have been used as student 
accommodation, will mean that they are not 
“rewarded” for their behaviour by being put 
in better accommodation.
5 Dutch newspaper the Parool has written 
that in the 19th century troublemakers were 
moved to villages in Drenthe and Overijssel, 
which rapidly became slums. But Boer 
insists that the government has learned from 
past mistakes and is not planning to house 
antisocial families together.
6 It would be more accurate to call them 
“scum houses” than scum villages, says 
Boer, “because we don’t want to put more 
than one of these families in the same area”. 
After a maximum of six months in these 
houses, in different parts of the city, the 
families will be found permanent homes. The 
city government expects to move around ten 
families a year into this programme, which 
starts in 2013.
7 The temporary accommodation will be 
heavily policed, but antisocial families will 
also have access to doctors, social workers 
and parole officers. “They are taken care of 
so the whole situation is not going to repeat 
at the new house they are in,” says Boer.
© Guardian News and Media 2012
First published in The Guardian, 04/12/12

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