Anti Squat

The world of precarious housing
Antikraak; The agencies behind it, and the bigger picture

Antikraak (= anti squat) means offering a building for use - one that is technically not yet in a habitable condition and will not be for some time - for much cheaper than it would be under a common rental contract. Tenants have virtually no rent protection and are not allowed to personalise the space. This article tries to give a comprehensive overview of the legal basis of Antikraak and temporary contracts, and, on this basis, demonstrate how it contributes to housing speculation and lack of tenant rights. It then offers a few basic approaches towards solutions. Within the given framework, the article includes interviews with Bond Precaire Woonvormen and Jaap Draaisma. Before we take a deep dive into the Antikraak industry, let’s cover the basics. 

Technically, Antikraak is supposed to be a viable solution for using vacant buildings that will not be in use in the near future, perhaps because they need some heavy renovation or will be demolished to make space for something new.
Empty buildings are not just a waste of space in a housing crisis. Obviously, they also do not house anyone who takes care of building maintenance, such as minor repairs, but also the usual daily upkeep of an apartment, such as making it look nice for potential new buyers. Additionally, long-term, empty-standing buildings are hazardous for owners, as the threat of their place being squatted is omnipresent in the worst housing crisis the city has experienced in 400 years. In short, leaving a building empty over time might contribute to its loss in value. The perfect solution for landlords, who for whatever reason are not using their building, is to hire one of the above-mentioned Antikraak agencies. With an Antikraak contract, owners are allowed to evict current inhabitants within a 14-28 day period. Users (known as a bruiklener = borrower) are usually not allowed to change anything in the interior, such as painting the walls, are often not allowed to have guests or throw parties, and the maintenance of the house is almost completely taken off the landlord's hands. In exchange, users do not have to pay rent, only service costs (formally bruikleeenvergoeding = loan fee).

Who beneifts from Antikraak?
If it sounds like the tenant has no ownership over the place that they are renting: you are correct, that is kind of the idea. Typically, tenants are required to do upkeep so that the place is ready at all times to be advertised to potential buyers. Additionally, Antikraak contracts often include a clause that gives landlords the right to inspect the place without prior notice. In short, anything that could make a tenant feel like they are living in a home is “not included” - privacy, decoration, and inviting people over.

To live in unique places for relatively cheap is an unbeatable offer for some.

Unfortunately, Antikraak is evidently still seen as an attractive offer, even growing in popularity, especially for young people who simply cannot afford the current rents in Amsterdam. To be specific, earlier in 2022, newspaper Het Parool predicted that Amsterdam would be short of 10-15,000 homes for vulnerable groups by 2030. Because Antikraak bureaus often use buildings that are supposed to eventually be demolished or entirely renovated, they can range from offices to soap factories. To live in unique places for relatively cheap is an unbeatable offer for some. At the end of the equation, Antikraak is exploiting the desperation of people who do not have the means to afford rent at worst and a fun, adventurous time of someone's life at best. For users, it is a lesser evil than ‘options’ like homelessness, or a life spent working only to pay rent.

Next, we will look at how Antikraak contributes to the housing crisis on a structural level.

No rent protection and housing speculation: the usual suspects of Amsterdam’s housing crisis
Speculation is a high-risk/reward real estate tactic in which buildings that are expected to rise in value over the years are systematically bought by investors and then purposefully not used for residential purposes, as the buying and reselling of them after market values have risen is the business itself. Under the guise of Antikraak, the vacancy status of such buildings can be extended unlimitedly. Landlords can comfortably sit back and let their buildings rise in value, which they most certainly will through speculation itself and the creation of housing bubbles. If scepticism is warranted towards landlords having steady unreasonably high sources of income through systematically buying or ‘investing’ in real estate, it is taken to the extreme with the Antikraak concept: money is coming in with a minimum amount of responsibility for the landlord. 

Bond Precaire Wonen: an example of collective self-organisation and some legal definitions 
All of this is done within the boundaries of the Dutch law, which begs the question: How is this legal? In order to get a better answer to this question, I met with Julian and Ben* from Bond Precaire Woonvormen (BPW), an association that helps tenants with temporary contracts through activism and legal advice. Julian came to the Netherlands in 2016 and studied Urban Geography, where he started to learn about neoliberal urban politics reshaping city landscapes. He himself lived from temporary contract to temporary contract for two years, moving every few months, before he sought help from BPW. Ben is a business economist, who specialised in finance and sees the housing issue from a broader perspective. Ben’s journey to BPW was a highly personal one and initially not influenced by typical left-wing ideas, when he became unexpectedly homeless regardless of a good career start. Ben explains that he has autism and that the experienced homelessness had harsh consequences for his life, as the lack of stability and structure, and a lack of resources from his family left him in a dire situation. After seeking help from BPW themselves, both chose to get involved with the association and started a local BPW group in Amsterdam. They obtained a space in the city centre where they organise weekly meetings, offer consultation hours for tenants and respond to media requests. Their most recent success case with BPW: Klokkenhof, a big building under renovation for years. 

To understand the Klokkenhof case fully, it is useful to understand what kind of rights are gained through different rental contracts. Here is a short overview for the full picture of temporary living, beyond the Antikraak concept: 

A permanent contract provides tenants in the Netherlands with relatively strong rights. Landlords can only terminate contracts through the courts and have to provide valid and strong reasons for doing so, additionally, they need to provide alternative housing options. This is why landlords will usually try their best to bypass giving tenants permanent residency. 
Temporary contracts have undergone drastic changes since the introduction of the Wet Doorstroming Huurmarkt law (Staatsblad 2016, 158):
Rooms have maximum leases of 5 years, whilst flats and studios run up to 2 years. If the contracts are renewed after this timeframe, they automatically result in permanent contracts. A 1-3 month cancellation notice comes with such contracts. 
There are four relevant subtypes of temporary contracts: 

Leegstandswet (Vacancy Act): for buildings that are going to be renovated, sold or demolished. Here, there is no fixed rental period, though the contract lasts at least 6 months and expires when the permit to rent the building out as Leegstandswet expires. There is a notice period of one month. 
Tussenhuur (intermediate rental): This kind of contract applies to homeowners that will return and use the property for their own residential use on a fixed date. There is a fixed rental period.
Antikraak: in legal terms, this kind of contract is not a rental contract but a loan agreement, which means you are making use of the building, not renting it. Tenants have virtually no rights and can be cancelled without reason within 14 days. Tenants should only pay for service and utility fees.
Doelgroepencontracten: These contracts are technically indefinite but usually include an extra clause that specifies a demographic such as students or age range. Once tenants do not fall under this demographic anymore, their contract ends. An example of this is student housing.

Back to Klokkenhof: BPW mainly specialises in tactics and activism to bring cases such as this one to the political agenda. Through public pressure, they hope to gain enough power to negotiate with landlords. In this case the previous owner and Vesteda (a rental agency) moved tenants internally for eight years, only changing their addresses, to prevent the tenants from gaining permanent contracts. The tenants were kept in a permanently precarious living situation and prevented rights. BPW represented the tenant's interests to the landlord through public pressure: signatures from the other tenants in the building were collected by going door-to-door and an information evening for the tenants was organised. Eventually, the signatures were presented to Vesteda, and for image purposes, they were willing to negotiate with the tenants. As a result, the tenants are now ensured to stay in the building until the renovation and receive permanent contracts after the renovations are finished. Moreover, they will get priority for alternative accommodation during renovations. Julian and Ben also describe that this case started with a single tenant seeking help and developed into a collective effort, exemplifying how much collective action can achieve. 

“When you act on an individual level”, Ben explains, “you quickly receive the message that you are the problem, have not made the right decisions and are responsible for your situation. But that’s not the case, as the problem is created by a power imbalance. This is why the ones in power push for individualism, whilst we respond with collective power.”

Whilst it is important to keep positive cases like this in mind, the detrimental effects of such legislature are plentiful. In addition to the internal move tactic, landlords will often use the first period of a temporary contract to test tenants. Tenants will often be very hesitant about complaints towards their landlord regarding things like maintenance for this reason, and more pressingly will not make use of institutions like the huurcommissie, where you can complain about high rents, because landlords will simply not renew the contracts as a response. 
The most extreme version of a temporary contract is Antikraak. The concept jumps through a bunch of legal hoops to exist. Instead of a rental contract, users are part of a bruikleenovereenkomst (= loan agreement), which means that they are borrowing the place without any consideration being made, and have to return it to the owner. In legal terms, consideration usually means a monetary transaction. So in simple English, this means: person A borrows the place from person B (borrows because they don’t pay rent), has to return it on the owner's terms and is stripped of any form of ownership themselves. That's why you don’t use terms such as ‘tenant’ or ‘rent’, because technically, you don’t live in the building. Even though, in real life, people do, and everyone involved is aware of that. This is why Antikraak usually should only entail service fees, such as the water bill. 
Thought it can’t get any worse? Unfortunately, it does. It seems to be rarely the case that you pay only for what you use yourself, as Antikraak contracts are infamous for entailing fees for random vaguely specified reasons. Additionally, if you choose to go to court to object to your eviction, you will usually be issued a Kort Geding, a fast procedure. The summons is sent by the landlord, and the lawyer writes a defence, instead of a Bodemprocedure, a normal legal procedure. This means that you will receive a summons within days from the lawyer, which in most cases entails your eviction, which also will take place a few days later. These evictions are done by private companies, in which municipalities may dispose of your belongings somewhere else, sometimes resulting in the loss of your property. It can be a brutal, traumatic experience, as cases such as the ADM eviction exemplify.

Antikraak contracts are infamous for entailing fees for random vaguely specified reasons.

Shockingly, you also have to pay for lawyer and process costs yourself, which can quickly add up to a few hundred euros, depending on your income. When you have the lowest classified income you may receive social tenant lawyers, however, these are becoming scarce, because of their low salaries. If you have slightly higher salaries you are left alone. All these factors dramatically reduce people's ability to go to court and have a fair chance to trial. The law offers little to no support to tenants, does not ensure renters' rights, and instead offers a supportive and suggestive framework to the powerful and rich.

What makes this an especially questionable idea to be supported by the municipality is the fact that it is set up by proponents such as Antikraak companies under the guise of actually helping out with the housing crisis, a way to fight leegstand (= vacancy), when in the long term, it is escalating the problem it is supposedly helping with. Its sole function is to protect vacancy. We must understand the seriousness, the underlying meaning and the consequences of something like Antikraak being supported by legislature, or the lack thereof. What it signals to citizens is that their municipalities are protecting the further profit of landlords over tenant rights and that exploitation occurs with the most possible simplicity in the most precarious of situations: the threat of homelessness. 
To become a member at Bond Precaire Woonvormen, you pay a membership fee of 30 to 60 euros a year depending on your income, which goes into a collective fund with which media actions, protests and legal staff are paid. Through them, you join a network of other people that seek to support each other, not just through activism, but also through the community. 

History
To understand how Antikraak came to be, one must first dive into the history of what it originally tried to prevent: squatting. Squatting has been an integral part of Amsterdam's cultural and historical heritage since the 1960s. Before 2010, squatters had the right to occupy vacant buildings as long as they could prove their legitimate use of the set residential property. In fact, Amsterdam in the 1980s was known as a squatter's utopia to all anarchists and punks throughout Europe. A law from 1914 meant that all that was needed to prove the residential property was a table, chair and a bed. Whilst squatting was a much more normalised action than in other countries, and was done by the average student, it took a more political tone in the 1980s with the first major housing crisis that was sparked by housing speculation, not a housing shortage. In 1987, it officially became illegal to squat buildings that had been standing empty for under a year, and squatters began feeling an added urgency to establish Huisvrede (= house peace), which would entail legitimate use of the building and good neighbourhood relations. 
This meant that collaboration with the police was not outside of the norm and created an interesting and certainly unique legal and political landscape, that allowed squatters to serve as an important check and balance for illegitimate uses of living spaces such as housing speculation. If landlords could not prove that they had legitimate plans of using their property within the next two years, they ran the risk of having the squatters win the court case: squatting essentially served as an important tool for the public to hold investors and the government responsible. Apart from the overt political use of squatting, the culture it brought with it shaped the city in essential ways. Culturally speaking, places such as ADM, OCCII, Vrankrijk and OT301 are major contributors to the music and arts scene, and social squats traditionally welcome anyone in need, whether it be through VoKus (= pay as you feel community meals), political mobilisation, other donation-based events, or - the most important thing that is getting lost through gentrification - community. Since the passing of Wet Kraken en Leegstand (= Squatting and Vacancy Act), squatting was essentially banned and 330 squats were evicted. Many important cultural sites and homes were destroyed and demolished, and the housing situation has worsened. The eviction of the old ADM in 2019 marked the fall of one of Amsterdam’s last free spaces. Antikraak, as the name suggests, was a further tool for the new trend of Dutch conservative, right-wing politics to prevent squatters to take action. 

The infamous middleman: Antikraak agencies 
The big mystery: who is behind these antikraak agencies? Some examples of antikraak brokers are companies such as Alvast and Zwerfkei. To illustrate the general tone and culture that is existing ‘on the other side’, you don’t need to look far. Under the Antikraak section of Alvast’s website, you find the following introductory statement (English translation) in which, believe it or not, no rent protection and scam-like conditions are openly advertised: 

“Alvast's loan agreements guarantee that there is emphatically no rent protection. Alvast is certified by the Keurmerk Leegstandsbeheer (KLB), a quality mark that ensures that affiliated vacancy managers must comply with strict regulations and behavioural conditions that apply to anti-squatting. Alvast ensures that the most suitable candidates are selected per project/object, whereby the property is thoroughly and frequently checked for correct use and irregularities. The flexible notice period of 28 days guarantees that you can quickly dispose of the property again, as soon as this is desired. The building will be delivered empty, on time and clean.” - (Alvast)

Alvast, the UvA and the Bijlmer Prison: Antikraak deals and the bigger problem 
As a case example, I will illustrate the University of Amsterdam’s (UvA) handling of the current housing crisis, as well as their previous collaboration with antikraak agency Alvast. It has become somewhat of a ‘tradition’ for UvA to send out reminders and disclaimers about the current housing market for students. But in 2022 for the first time they officially recommended to international students that if they have not found housing by 15th August (two weeks before the start of the semester), they should consider revoking enrollment from the university. This is a stark contrast to the UvA’s previous handling of the issue of homeless students. On their web page they address the international student sector: 

In this tight housing market, UvA International Student Housing has a limited number of rooms (approx. 3000 units) reserved, which can accommodate roughly half of the newly incoming international students every semester. This means that the other half must find a place on their own. Don’t underestimate this, it often takes weeks or even months to find suitable accommodation. It is not a smart idea to only start searching when you arrive in Amsterdam for your studies. Therefore, we encourage everyone to start on time, and look for accommodation independently, even if you also applied for the UvA housing service.

When I studied Psychology in 2018 at UvA, 600-something students were admitted to the bachelor's the first year. I specifically remember the desperate search for housing heavily influencing some of my fellow students. Particularly the students that came from outside the EU had a hard time with the intense financial strain of rent, inadequate and impermanent housing, culture shocks and added pressure from their family. Often, parents of these students had used a majority of their savings to be able to afford a good education for their child: non-EU fees are around 11,000€ per academic year, meaning that a Bachelor completed in regular study time comes with a hefty price tag of 33,000€. A few times, I spoke to students not being able to afford the flight home for the Christmas holidays. Due to this, these students were carrying a lot more pressure on their shoulders than they should, and oftentimes did not manage to pass their first year, as is compulsory - meaning that they returned to their home country, degree-less and short of 11.000€ not including all the living costs of that year. This resulted in the course size being cut almost in half by the time we entered the second year. Whether it is questionable to demand such study fees of students, make for harsh passing conditions and not make sure that the number of students admitted can be cared for, is up to the reader to decide.
Another rather questionable solution the University of Amsterdam came up with in 2018 to create more housing opportunities for university students was cooperation with Alvast. They offered us the opportunity to live in the old Bijlmer prison - ‘Bijlmerbajes’. It was not the typical Antikraak arrangement of Alvast but fell into Leegstandwet as the rental period was fixed, lasting exactly six months, and some caretakers were supposed to manage general repairs. The rooms - in true prison aesthetic - were former cells: 8 square meters large, with a toilet that often was not even separated by a door. The windows were decorated with a pair of bars each. For these 8 square meters, we paid 450 euros per month. As mentioned, the whole and only benefit for tenants of these short-term contracts are the cheaper rent. At the time, this was by far the best option for me and hundreds of other students, as we could meet other students, and paid around 100-200 euros less than usual for a room in that area. I also had no idea what companies such as Alvast stood for and what my rights were, just like any student living there.
To illustrate how little anyone was taking care of the place there: For the majority of the winter I spent there my heating didn’t work, which no one would help me with either. I eventually was lent a portable heater in the last month of my stay, which I quickly returned as it clearly said on the packaging that using this device in rooms smaller than 20 square meters would pose a fire hazard. I chose recently to contact the University and ask them for specifications of what the rent we paid back then included and how the deal was negotiated between the university and Alvast. The university responded with: 

In 2018 the UvA collaborated with AM Real Estate Development and managing company Alvast to realise student housing in the Bijlmer Bajes. Students signed a rental contract with Alvast. The rental contract was based on temporary rental of living spaces, not antikraak. Meaning students who had a temporary contract with Alvast had the certainty of being able to stay in their rooms during the full period of their rental contract. The rental price contained: service costs, utilities, maintenance, municipal taxes, resident assistants and furnishing.

Whilst it is correct that their collaboration with Alvast did contain a rental contract, the high rental price, and the problematic collaboration with agencies such as Alvast were not acknowledged. 
Eventually, we all had to leave, and the buildings were ripped down, as the land was sold by the state for 84 million euros, to make space for new residential apartments. It was a pretty sad moment, to see our first home in Amsterdam, no matter how crappy, be ripped down. Included in the demolition was Lola Lik, a more social version of Antikraak, a broedplaats where vacant buildings are used for social and cultural projects. This particular one included a refugee-run Syrian restaurant named A Beautiful Mess, which was doing great things in terms of job opportunities and community building for the neighbourhood. 
At the very least, 1340 new homes will be built there, with 400 of those supposedly being social housing.
It is highly questionable for universities to cooperate with companies such as Alvast and engage in extremely high rents for what is offered. Even more questionable is the current context in which tenants such as students have no alternatives to these offers. Why this is so problematic can be further elaborated by the talk I had with Jaap Draaisma.

The municipality, urban resort and social solutions 
Jaap Draaisma is a housing-market researcher at the HvA (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) and has a research website on the development of Amsterdam: www.amsterdamsorteermachine.nl. It deduces that, as a place for new inhabitants to settle, Amsterdam has become a place where people stay for a few years and are then sorted out - except for the people that have the kind of wealth that allows them to stay. Currently, their research focuses on the demographic of teachers: low wages and expensive rent force teachers out of the city, creating teacher shortages of up to 25-40% in the poorest neighbourhoods and creating an accumulation of inequality. Through this research, Draaisma hopes to show the municipality that if teachers move to the outskirts of the city or neighbouring cities, they will also leave behind their jobs in Amsterdam and advocate for social housing. 
Before his work as a researcher, Draaisma co-founded Urban Resort, one of the most successful broedplaatsen companies founded by ex-squatters. Ultimately, Draaisma chose to leave the company after 12 years when it became apparent that Urban Resort had become more of “a housing cooperation than a self-organised body.” Draaisma also acknowledges that the bigger the company got, the more bureaucratic their work became and therefore the distance between tenants and the Urban Resort staff increased too much. Draaisma is left with a sense of success and maybe even pride about managing to create social use or many big empty-standing buildings in Amsterdam during his time with UR, followed by a small but bitter aftertaste of the spatial effects of the initiative and the lack of tenant participation.
A dark change in cultural climate is not only present in Draaisma’s career but also in the city that he calls home. He lived in the Spuistraat, not long ago the ultimate representation of a blooming squatters community, that has now become a completely commercialised “luxury brand street”. A loss of soul and character seems to be the price for Amsterdam in order to re-brand itself as a metropolitan city. From open-minded and rough, to the millionaire’s haven:“That’s not my city”, Draaisma knows all too well. He partially attributes these changes to a lack of organisation in the radical left. The advantage of not thinking the same thing is to create diversity, which in turn gives birth to free spaces. But, the lack of common goals seems to also allow the radical neo-liberal to be in charge of the changes in the city’s landscape. 

Lola is a result of a discussion on how to fight antikraak. Lola means Vacancy Solvers Amsterdam, as opposed to vacancy defenders. Lola was made as a vacancy solution, against ‘leegstand’. For them, it was a way to use the empty buildings to a maximum, for cheap and to fight leegstandbeheerders (= antikraak agencies). An end to the vacancy by turning empty buildings into social projects. The difference between companies such as Lola and Alvast is the difference of their fundamental mode of operation: one is non-commercial (Lola), whilst the other has shareholders and functions for profit (Alvast). Additionally, Lola does their best to house as many people as possible, whereas Antikraak usually outs one or two people in entire buildings. Additionally, Lola's projects usually result in neighbourhood initiatives (such as A Beautiful Mess). But social non-profit attempting to combat vacancies, such as Lola, are being kicked out of Amsterdam to make way for development. So they move to cities like Almere and Lelystad.

Despite this frightening development, Jaap Draaisma also has hope, through his projects such as the Amsterdam Alternative with a deep appreciation for its non-hierarchical infrastructure. He describes the network as one of Amsterdam’s ‘last strongholds’. 
Draaisma also points out the paradoxical legislature surrounding Antikraak. Companies like Lola, but also squats, quickly get evicted or awarded hefty fines for using buildings for housing that are not technically meant to be used as such. As soon as a building falls under Antikraak however, rights and safety are ‘thrown out of the window’ since it is technically not a rental contract. Such hypocritical legislature, which is mainly driven by profit hunger, can have extremely dangerous consequences. Through neglect and carelessness, the court ruled Camelot responsible for the death of an antikraak tenant that tragically died in Brabant in 2013, because of the typical unsafe living conditions of such buildings. The tenant got electrocuted in the shower. In short, Draaisma sees Antikraak as a dirty business in its truest sense under the guise of a ‘social solution’: Antikraak is the most insidious symptom of a collapsing housing market. 

Firms that make a profit through the exploitation of tenants' precarious living situations have to be held accountable and be urged to become social and non-commercial.

To end the interview, I asked Draaisma what he believes has to be done to solve these issues. After taking a considerably long break to think, he suggested the following: ending the privatisation of real estate and the market, and a more serious decision-making process for the municipalities. He demands an end to the liberalisation concept, that allows those with money to do ‘whatever’. He acknowledges that city officials seem to serve private powers rather than citizens after thirty years of heavy privatisation of the market. He believes in movements such as Lola that try to find social solutions for vacancy and believes a fundamental change in the political atmosphere is necessary. Furthermore, it is imperative to not work with Antikraak companies on the level that, for example, UvA has, if other alternatives are there. Firms that make a profit through the exploitation of tenants' precarious living situations have to be held accountable and be urged to become social and non-commercial. He also sees a solid future in leftist movements acquiring their own real estate and turning them into collective property, such as initiatives like Vrij Beton. On a national level, he calls for strengthening of the leegstandsregister (register of vacant buildings that make taxing and fining landlords possible), rejection of the idea of housing as a free market, and improvements to social housing. Last but not least, squatting anti-squats can be a good form of direct action, to draw public attention to this issue. 

Different perspectives to aid your conclusion
Throughout my research and the interviews I conducted, I quickly realised that there are many varying views on how the antikraak issue, and to a greater extent temporary contracts, should be dealt with. As an example, an association like BPW has a critical stance regarding concepts such as Lola, as they still work with temporary contracts, whilst others see it as dealing with the legal constraints of the current legislature in the best way possible. This might also be why UvA chose to cooperate with Alvast. 
In the end, these specifics are up to the individual to conclude. Hopefully, this article provided an accessible groundwork for the reader to do just that, and to take action, in whatever way possible. Whilst there is plenty of ground for criticism towards the antikraak concept, it also illustrates the current system and political atmosphere in which we live. A system that is set out to benefit people who have more than enough and push out ones that are already disadvantaged. Unfair agreements without any rights in exchange for cheaper living costs exemplify the uneven power dynamics at play. We must ask ourselves who this city belongs to, or rather, whether it should belong to anyone. We must ask ourselves whether we want to live in a city that actively pushes for the existence of agencies that seek to secure these unjust exploitative arrangements that promote vacancy. Should the legal system protect its people, or profit-making which threatens everyone except the few that are engaged in housing speculation?