It is an impasse that has lasted for months. The municipality of Tynaarlo wants to buy café Onder de Linden in Vries, but there is still a tenant living there who does not want to leave. The municipality is now starting an enforcement process.
“It gives me a lot of stress,” says Kris Huizinga, who has been renting the house at the back of the building for three years. “As far as I’m concerned, enforcement to get me out of buying the property seems like a lot of abuse of power.”
Café Onder de Linden is the last café in Vries. The current owner Sietse Hamersma has been wanting to retire for some time, but cannot find a successor.
In order to maintain the catering function for the village, the municipality of Tynaarlo wants to buy the building. Ultimately, he wants to turn it into a cultural center.
But Tynaarlo does have the condition that the building is delivered empty. And that’s where the shoe pinches.
Hamersma says he has a verbal agreement with his tenant that he would leave if the property were sold. But he can’t remember that.
Huizinga: “I have a rental contract for an indefinite period and always pay my rent properly.” That’s why he doesn’t plan to just leave.
“I would like nothing more, because I no longer feel at home in my own house. But I have nowhere to go,” says the tenant.
Attempts to find alternative accommodation were unsuccessful. Options suggested by the landlord were also inappropriate, according to Huizinga. “All I want now is an affordable rental home in the municipality of Tynaarlo, nothing more and nothing less than what I have now.”
Twice there was a date for the transfer of the purchase of the café and it was always postponed. Three parties in the municipal council asked questions about this. The mayor and aldermen write in a letter that they want to give the owner time to find a solution with the tenant.
The letter also states that occupancy of the part of the building where Huizinga lives does not fit in with the zoning plan. His house would not have a residential function but a catering function. The municipality therefore speaks of an ‘illegal situation’.
The municipality also intervenes immediately by starting an enforcement process. This means that the house is checked for fire safety and whether it meets all structural requirements. The council immediately indicates that it is not prepared to cooperate in legalization in this case.
Huizinga has now had the first officials on its doorstep to investigate fire safety. “A very strange situation,” he says. “That the municipality can use its power to evict me and buy the property.”
Whether it can come to this is still uncertain. A spokesperson for the municipality said that “this is being investigated during an enforcement process. We do not anticipate a possible outcome.”