Surprise Eviction for the Homeless
AMP has always to some degree or other been involved with the foreign people who live under the Culemborg and Kavukiland Bridges. In the past we have provided food, clothing and even CV services to the people living there. As word about AMP’s services got out, there has been a flow of clients from there coming directly to us at our offices.
We are very involved in networking with other organisations in the city who assist refugees, and through joint meetings with these organisations, we received word that the city was planning to forcibly remove those living under the bridges on a certain date within the next month. Apparently there was to be quite a media contingent attached to the action. It didn’t take much investigation to discover that those doing the ‘removing’ were to be offering no alternative options to these + 150 people. No extra beds at shelters were to be arranged, no low cost housing would be offered. They would just literally be chased away.
At meetings with Provincial Government and City Dept of Social Development, Province agreed to arrange an audit of the people under the bridge and to spearhead the putting together of an information brochure that could be handed out and discussed with the people under the bridge in order to inform them of their rights, their responsibilities, the options open to them and the resources available to them in the city.
When we heard that the date of the removal was to be the 14th of October and it became clear that Province had not proceeded with the information brochure, the refugee organsations had an emergency meeting to ‘make a plan’. In the end, Scalabrini, AMP and the CCID developed a simple brochure and arranged to take it to the people under the bridge on Tuesday 4th at 9pm. We were accompanied by the fieldworkers from CCID who know the areas and the people who live there. (New people arrive under the bridge every day, so we realised that ongoing visits are actually necessary, but we thought we’d start with the one for now.)
It was a freezing cold, windy spring night and there were about 150 people (mainly men) huddling around the fires. We gave them the flyers and explained that there would be people coming to remove them from the area in ten days time and that they needed to make other arrangements for themselves. We advised them of the resources available to them with regard to accommodation, documentation and other general assistance and left the information brochures with them. It was hard to leave so many cold people out there that night.
The next day, word reached us that the city was livid that we had warned the people of the impending ‘raid’, revealing a rather difficult to understand, underhand approach and motivation by these powers towards the issue. The planned ‘raid’ did not in fact take place on the 14th after all, but we have received word that people were removed from under the bridges early on the morning of Firday November 4th. We are not sure where they have been displaced to, but they will probably try and move to other areas of the city. The areas under the bridges are being patrolled and apparently people will not be allowed to return there.