APRIL-MAY 2021 | 13
NATIONAL
Boom in the number of residents moving away from city centers in the Netherlands The latest survey by the Land Registry (Kadaster) shows that the large cities in the Netherlands are experiencing an exodus. In recent months, 38% of Amsterdammers who moved bought a home outside the city. The high house prices are the main reason for leaving the city, as shown by an analysis of housing market figures between March 2020 and February 2021. “Prices are very high. Some people cannot afford them anymore; there is a limit. As a result, more and more rich people come to Amsterdam and people with less money to spend move to Almere, for example. This trend has been going on for years,” says Land Registry housing market expert Paul de Vries to Het Parool newspaper. Additionally, only half of the home buyers from the four major Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht) moved within their own municipality last year. In Amsterdam the number was 52 percent, compared to 70 percent in 2015. The average distance of a move increased from an average of 37 kilometers in 2015, to 44 in 2020. That’s the largest increase in six years. The housing market has flourished in the past twelve months as never before: a record number of people moved and house prices soared to a record high. A total of 243,946 homes changed owners, according to Het Parool. That’s 12 percent more than last year and more than the
record in 2017. This is mainly due to the low mortgage interest rate and the new tax measures aimed to support first-time buyers. NVM, the national association of real estate agents, attributes the dip in Amsterdam to the already high price level and the corona crisis. Last year, the capital attracted fewer foreigners, who are an attractive target group for investors in rental properties. Working from home is possible anywhere According to the Land Registry, the rise in the number of people leaving the city might also be explained by the “work from home” policy. This measure made the travel distance to work less important when choosing a place to live. In an interview for Het Parool, Sandra Smits (37) says corona has accelerated her family’s move out of the city. Sandra has been working from home for almost a year and her employer has said that working from home will also be possible in the future. “When I heard that, my husband and made concrete plans for buying a house, with a garden, further outside of Amsterdam,” says Smits. At first she looked in the region, but prices have also risen sharply there. “We decided to increase our search radius to 120 kilometers from Amsterdam.”
for the people to live the city. It suggests that outside the capital, your house will be better, more spacious, and cheaper too. More for less. Places with a garden and a larger number of rooms are the most popular. Less importance is attached to living within the Amsterdam ring road. Jan Willem Duyvendak, professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, has researched the “feeling of home” and says this has changed with corona. “Home has been given a different function, it’s the place where we live ánd work. Many people realize that it’s not ideal to be at home all the time,” states the professor to De Volkskrant. Especially when your house is small, as most Amsterdam homes are, you will feel the need for more space, leading to a home search outside the city.
Cinemas and cafes are closed and cities have become hotbeds for viruses. It makes sense that city dwellers consider moving to a place with more space and greenery. “The city’s appeal is temporarily less and the reasons for leaving Amsterdam are felt more strongly, such as the crowds, unaffordability and lack of space. But I do wonder if these people will not regret it. At a certain point the city is no longer a hotspot and cafes will open again. Will we continue to work from home after this pandemic?” asks Duyvendak. Let’s wait and see.
Written by Raphael Perachi Vieira
Outdoor space versus city life De Volkskrant newspaper reports the need for more outdoor space as another reason
Oh rats! While Homo sapiens is battling corona, the Rattus rattus is suffering an epidemic of its own. It’s not the first time in history that humans and rats simultaneously impacted each other’s lives. In the fourteenth century, the Black Death, a pandemic that killed more than one-third of Europe’s population, was spread across the continent by rats. It was not necessarily the rats that dispersed the bubonic plague, but rather their fleas, who were carrying the virus. Once a ship sailed into a harbor and was unloaded, not long afterwards, the rats on board (including their pesty fleas), swam ashore. The fleas quickly found new hosts, and before too long, the poor who lived in cramped housing with poor sanitation, and slept on mattresses made of straw, became infested with fleas. Today’s current corona epidemic might not be spreading the globe via rodents, but rat populations are simultaneously growing with the spread of the corona virus. Amsterdam’s posh district Rivierenbuurt is witnessing its own plague of rats. The neighbourhood, which was built in the 1920s and 1930s, was part of an ambitious urban renewal project to safeguard city residents from epidemics with better hygiene for Amsterdam’s poor and middle classes, who were often victims of epidemics such as cholera in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, prestigious Dutch architects such as Hendrik Berlage, Willem de Klerk and Piet Kramer designed the neighbourhood in the art deco style known as the
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Amsterdamsche School. They aimed to improve public health by providing housing with better air quality and by creating more green areas filled with trees, bushes and lawns, which would stop the spread of diseases. Once the project was finished, the neighbourhood turned out so beautiful that it became popular not just among working-class families, but also among the middle class and wealthier groups. But now the green neighbourhood has become a popular residential area for rats. The ‘plague of rats’, as the city district is calling it, has erupted after sewage pipes, swarming with rats, were dug up and replaced. But it’s not only the sewer system that is causing an increase in rat numbers in the district. With corona lockdown measures in place and more people working from home, residents are purchasing more goods online, which require more packaging, and consequently creating more trash. Municipal waste services are not equipped to keep up with the pile of rubbish, which means that trash containers are spilling over – an ideal environment for rats. While the rats are feeding from the overflowing garbage containers, many of the rodents make their homes and nests in the bushes in the picturesque green areas of Amsterdam’s Rivierenbuurt. To stop the plague of rats, the municipality is posting warning signs in the green areas, prohibiting locals from feeding the pigeons and ducks, whose food is also consumed by rats, and fining them a hefty 70 euros if caught.
Even worse, the rat epidemic is not only plaguing Amsterdam’s chic neighbourhood. Since the corona lockdown started a year ago, human behaviour around the world has drastically changed, as well as that of rats, who have always lived in close vicinity to humans. In US cities, which in the past saw lots of tourists, rats have become hungry and are coming out of hiding. Where they in the past had fed from restaurant rubbish bins or trash dumped on the street by tourists, now that restaurants are closed and tourists are gone, rats are forced to look for new feeding areas and times. While in the past rats came out at night, now they are coming out in the daytime and are no longer scared of humans.
To be on the safe side, improve your home hygiene by placing your household trash in the proper container, as well as securing the lids of trash containers. Seal any cracks under doors and other openings to the outside, where a rat might squeeze in. If that doesn’t work, you can always opt to keep them as a pet. They are highly intelligent, very clean (contrary to popular belief), social, affectionate and low maintenance. What more could you ask for in a pet?
Written by Benjamin Roberts
07-04-21 14:50
