Citizen plan: ready-made houses on superfluous football fields in Velsen

It is a simple calculation for Ap: there are more than enough football fields in the municipality of Velsen, and there are far too few houses. “I see that when I go for a walk through the village, as every IJmuiden resident does.”

According to the gray resident of IJmuide, the housing shortage among young residents of Velsen is so high that he has not just left it with a simple calculation: he has worked out a fairly extensive plan on a few A4 pages with spatial and financial figures. According to Ap’s plan, the municipality can build houses for young people and starters profitably, “a bit attractive” and above all quickly.

It’s your turn in the free sector

How exactly? Ap: “What I have in mind are wooden houses that a company builds turnkey. One such house is three floors of five by four square meters, with a total of 55 square meters of living space (see image, red). ).”

Such houses, “no containers, everyone thinks that”, have already been built in Emmeloord and Knight’s Church, and consist of a kitchen on the ground floor, a living area on the first floor, and a bedroom upstairs. The houses do need a solid concrete foundation, builder Startblock reports on its website.

It may not be big, but you can manage with it as a young person, in terms of space and also in terms of money, Ap thinks: “If you buy a house of that size, you might be there for four- five hundred euros a month. I don’t have to tell anyone what you have to pay for that in the free sector, then it’s your turn. Young people and starters don’t have that money.”

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That football fields will have to disappear for the prefab houses, does not have to hurt the various associations, according to Ap. In fact, he says, the turnkey housing can even benefit the clubs.

The municipality can let part of the profit flow back to the clubs, thinks Ap, who says he is reasonably at home in the Velsen football world: “A new canteen or accommodation, that’s what most clubs are looking for. The fields, on the other hand , are also rarely used on weekends. And the clubs will not grow in membership in the coming years, don’t tell me that.”

If Velsen and Terrasvogels jointly give up one field, SVIJ and Stormvogels go back from eight to four fields together, and IJmuiden and Waterloo jointly go back from seven to five fields, that will yield seven footballs of land for homes, Ap calculates. And on each of those fields, according to Ap’s calculations, the municipality can build 86 houses.

That is of course too much of a good thing, Ap realizes, “If you build a field full of youth housing, you get a kind of ghetto. But start with ten or twenty, do something. Don’t wait, wait, wait.”

Ap himself is in any case convinced of his idea, which he will explain to the city council on Thursday. “If the municipality wants something, then it has to be done this way. Because otherwise it won’t work. If you know of another way, I’d love to hear it.”