havoc slum evict harassment intimidating
scum offender
access
antisocial
troublemaker
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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