1/6 Blood trail on the stairs.
Residents of the TalentSquare student flat in Tilburg are fed up. The students have been terrorized for years by homeless people who haunt them and who sleep in the hallways. It is also regularly a big mess. A window was smashed last weekend and a trail of blood runs from the stairs to the elevator. Poop on the stairs is also not unknown to the residents. The students ask the housing association for more security, but that is still unsuccessful.
A used tampon, mattress, full garbage bags, clothes and dumped furniture: these are just a small selection of the junk that the students encounter in the corridors of the complex. “The nuisance is enormous,” says Olav Stol. He lives in the flat and is a member of the TalentSquare housing board. “The traces of blood in the elevator and corridors are the worst I’ve seen. And a window was smashed this weekend. It was just replaced, but that new window is also damaged again.”
The residents still feel most terrorized by the homeless. “They sleep in the stairwells every week,” says Olav. A poll by the housing board shows that at least a hundred residents no longer dare to go outside at night because they feel unsafe.
“I never take the stairs.”
“It’s super scary,” says a resident who wishes to remain anonymous. “They chase you, try to get in or stand in front of your window and look inside.” She has also often heard glass shatter from top to bottom at night. “This complex has thirteen floors. So the distance the glass travels… Dangerous.”
“I never take the stairs,” says student Fotini Kalaira. This resident does not feel unsafe, but she does find it annoying that strange things keep happening. Recently she too was chased by someone who tried to get into the building. “I wanted to go in and saw a woman waiting at the door. She tried to go in after me. I told her this building is for residents only and she had to open the door with her own key. That she didn’t.”
“Sometimes the police come, but they stay away if they are too busy.”
About three hundred students are together in a WhatsApp group to talk about what they come across. They also post photos and videos of the homeless and the mess on Instagram. Photos go back to at least two years ago.
Housing corporation SSH says that the problems have indeed been going on for some time. The corporation is working with community police officers and homeless shelters and says it is working hard on a solution.
But residents say they do not think the measures are sufficient. Olav of the housing board: “At the moment someone from security comes once a night. They could increase that to three, but that won’t happen. More budget should be released for that.”
Residents therefore regularly call the police, but that is not always useful. “Sometimes the police come, but if they are too busy, they also stay away,” says one of the residents. Several students are said to have asked the SSH for extra security. “But then we are told by the SSH that we either have to arrange that ourselves or that our rent will go up to arrange it.”