House: Eekje
Residents: Seven residents, who prefer to remain anonymous due to the nature of their living space. Squatting is not allowed.
UNIque because: it’s a squat.
‘We’ve been living here for over a month now and we’ve been pretty busy during that time. The roof had to be repaired and we are working on making the place cosy and comfortable. We also had a neighbours’ day to get to know the people around us and we have set up a diner where people can come and eat on a donation basis.’
‘Our relations with the neighbours are actually very good. We knew Wageningen was fairly open-minded, but we had no idea how the neighbours would react. Fortunately, it’s working out fine, and we’ve even had Christmas cards and cookies. We sometimes wonder if that would have happened if we hadn’t been white and in higher education.’
‘Squatting is a political statement for us, but it’s also just a necessity: many of us didn’t have anywhere to live before this. It looks as though we can make good arrangements with the owner about the conditions for staying here.’
‘Living in a squat, with all new residents, creates a lot of freedom. We can organize things however we want. A slide down the stairs? Why not!
We are free to decide together how we want to live, what our norms and values are, and what our traditions will become. We talked a lot about that beforehand. Look, on this whiteboard you can see the mind map we drew of our ideas about squatting and living together.’
‘We want to organize more diner evenings and political debates, and breathe new life into the Wageningen squatting helpdesk. We are now quite UNIque, but we don’t really want to be. We’ve received a lot of messages from people who are also interested in living in a squat. The housing shortage is still acute.’
If you too want your UNIque house in Resource, send an email to resource@wur.nl.
