Fieldtrip!!!

This past Thursday I packed my bags and set off for a day trip to Arnhem. Arnhem is a little city 97 kms east of Rotterdam, which takes approximately 2 hours to get to by train. I was in Arnhem because I was fortunate enough to have a meeting with the Director of Volkshuisvesting, which is a housing corporation in Arnhem. How, might you ask, did I land a meeting with the director of a very successful housing corporation? A corporation that has approximately 13,000 units in Arnhem alone? Well, I was lucky enough to have an inside source, we'll call her Bird, who was able to snag me an appointment with the big man, Mr. B, himself.

I arrived in the early afternoon and we began our visit with a short interview. I was especially interested in a project that I know as 'the Mediterranean (housing) project'. This project is quite unique in that these houses were designed with input from women who immigrated to the Netherlands. This project began when an architect connected to volkshuisvesting interviewed a group of women (who would be considered 'allochthonen') in order to learn more about what an ideal family home would look like from their perspective. Why, you ask, would a housing corporation go to such lengths to research/design/build an accommodation for a particular group of individuals in their renting population? It was thought that the preferences of this group in particular had yet to be accommodated for in building house(s) practices. I personally found this project to be unique in its conception and approach (holding numerous focus groups...why it's damn near anthropological (!) although I cannot make any comment on the questions asked at the time since I was not present at the meetings). I also learned that it was only one of many ideas by volkshuisvesting which sought to create a dialogue between the corporation and its renters for the purpose of what I came to understand as 'better housing practices'. If individuals are happy in their homes and their surrounding neighbourhoods, then they make better renters and a better place or neighbourhood to be. At least, this is my general impression. I was in awe that a housing corporation did not just care about the physical housing. Most of the emphasis was put on the individuals in the houses in addition to their social connections to other renters, to their neighbourhoods and to their city.

But it was not enough to have a chat about these things. Mr. B (in his nice suit and shoes) and I hopped on a pair of bikes and cycled to the neighbourhood where the Mediterranean houses were built. It was interesting to see the buildings and their surroundings as it gave you an idea as to how different they were from the other houses but not in an 'out-of-place' way. The results from the focus groups identified a couple of areas where the design of the house could be changed. These included: a closed separation between the kitchen and living room; creating a larger distance between the main bathroom and the living room; the ability to park one's car close to the house instead of in the street. From this photo you can see that at least one of these suggestions was accounted for (with the possibility that all were accounted for however, we did not go inside). While these were not the only findings from the research, and those that I have provided, are from memory so please take this into account, I found the whole process of taking renters thoughts and preferences into account when building houses, to be very positive.

My fieldtrip to Arnhem is not the only experience that I've had with housing corporations. Housing corporations are becoming important for my research because their housing and neighbourhood projects have quite a significant impact on how people come together in the neighbourhood. Most housing corporations have 'visions' for a particular neighbourhood that could result in a neighbourhood being torn down and rebuilt in a different fashion, or having buildings renovated to change the occupancy or doing something as simple as painting the outside frames of all the windows to make things look nice. It also includes building playgrounds, doing landscaping, creating parks, many things that are possibly outside the scoop of a housing corporation. From what I've heard, experiences with housing corporations are not all positive but depend somewhat on the vision of the neighbourhood held by the corporations and by the other inhabitants. While I came away from volkshuisvesting with quite a positive feeling, I will follow up with housing corporations here in Rotterdam in order to better understand where these money-making businesses figure into the scheme of things in the neighbourhood and in between neighbours.

Just as an ending note, I've personally been living in an apartment owned by a social housing corporation here in Rotterdam and have had no issues to date. A very positive personal experience here as well.