In a growing procession, the mayor walks past the deterioration in Schiebroek-Zuid: ‘This scares me’

What do the children and teenagers wish for in Schiebroek-Zuid, the neighborhood in the north of Rotterdam where poverty and nuisance remained hidden in the statistics? In the auditorium of the new Stephanus School, the central primary school in the area, the children will have the opportunity to tell their mayor on Tuesday evening.

Carola Schouten is standing on the central stairs, the children are standing next to her. They can ask her questions, one each. “Can you provide more amusement parks in the area?” With roller coasters, preferably between the flats. And that they can continue to play football and can they have a safe place to come together and get to know each other? “There is not much to do here for young people.”

“I just heard someone talk about that,” says Schouten, “a place to get together, a community center.” “What do you think of drunk people?” asks a ten-year-old girl. A boy, also ten years old, next to her: “There are a lot of drunk people coming to you. They act very scary.”

Schouten: “That scares me. It really is a theme, I want to improve that.”

Parade

The mayor was received at the end of the afternoon at the office of the welfare foundation in Schiebroek-Zuid. She walks with police officers and neighborhood councilors to a place where volunteers cook for the elderly. A procession slowly forms in the dark, more people join her after each visit. The procession goes past teenagers on chairs in front of the snack bar and into the youth hub. Depending on who she speaks to, the mayor introduces herself with her first name or her last name.

I’m terrified to let my fourteen year old son go outside

The procession walks past the tram stop, the glass of which has been lying in thousands of pieces on the street for weeks. Past low houses in poor condition and past neatly renovated flats and the vegetable gardens that residents maintain themselves. To the children’s community center and then into the primary school, which is full of residents, at tables, on benches, toddlers on their laps, elderly people behind walkers. “Everyone is welcome,” said the flyer that flew through the neighborhood via app a week before her arrival.

The mayor is friendly and interested. She hears that the street is hardening, that small children are also being threatened and beaten. Mothers worry about their teenagers. “I’m terrified to let my fourteen-year-old son go outside. Young people are being stabbed and robbed for nothing, and that is a lot around here.” Another mother is more positive. There is help for people who need it and she is pleased with the many lawns and trees. But Schouten also hears about dark, unsafe places in the evening. And that every time there is something fun to do for children in the neighborhood, it is taken away or abolished.

Neighborhood profile

The chairman of a foundation that tries to combat poverty tells the mayor: “We are dealing with five councilors. It’s not easy to get them all on the same page.” Last Wednesday, the councilor for Poverty Reduction (Natasha Mohamed-Hoesein) visited a resident who is committed to Schiebroek-Zuid. The councilors for Care (Ronald Buijt) and Welfare (Faouzi Achbar) were at the housing association on Thursday.

Since an article in NRC At the beginning of October, the municipality paid more attention to Schiebroek-Zuid, brands involved. It mainly described the hidden poverty and nuisance. There were no statistics for the neighborhood with more than 7,200 residents, which meant that problems were partly invisible, with all the consequences that entailed. Precisely here, in this already vulnerable neighborhood, a striking number of vulnerable groups have been placed for years – people with alcohol addiction, confused people, asylum seekers, ex-prisoners. Instead of in the more affluent north of the district, or the adjacent, wealthy Hillegersberg.

The addicts, the youth problems, the bad housing, the other Schiebroek does not have that

No one protests, but the children in Schiebroek-Zuid in particular suffer a lot from the drunken men who hang around on the street and sit on benches by the pond. Children get comments and turn around when they have to go to the supermarket.

There came questions for advice and took the advice a motion to give Schiebroek-Zuid, with its own characteristics, its own neighborhood profile, so that the problems are visible.

The mayor herself also sees that too many drunk and addicted people are being accommodated in Schiebroek-Zuid, she says in the auditorium. “There is a lot of pressure on the neighborhood.” Not only here, also in other vulnerable Rotterdam neighborhoods such as Carnisse. She also hears it from healthcare institutions.

Schouten: “It’s not so much the neighborhood profile, I think, it’s a concentration of cheap homes.” She can’t solve everything, she adds. Depending on the method of financing, the municipality is only partly responsible for this care. “But we have to do something,” says Schouten. “I will tackle this together with the Care Councilor.”

The mayor wants to hear from the residents about the division in the neighborhood: “How do I actually address you? Do you see yourself as Schiebroek-Zuid or as one joint Schiebroek district?” Most hands go up for the latter, the neighborhood as a whole.

But then Ubah Moussa steps to the microphone. She lives in a house full of mold opposite the school and worked in home care, visiting all parts of the neighborhood. “Schiebroek-Zuid has the addicts, the youth problems, the bad housing,” she says. “The other Schiebroek doesn’t have that.”

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