Huis Uitzetten

This is the Nederlands word for what happens when you don't pay your rent and/or taxes, here you pay property tax even when you rent a place...house eviction/throw out. It finally happened to our next door neighbor, that shares our landing, yesterday.

About 5 years ago an Antillian man moved into the place. Arjan knew he had a lot of children, speculating they were probably from different women. I only saw the man a few times because after I moved here the man didn't live here...he had other people living in the place. The one living there the most was a son going to a nearby college who told us he was the only son and there were 12 daughters!, some still in the Antilles. There have been all sorts of people coming and going including an Australian, a German, and most recently a woman with a little boy. We have reported the barrage of strange people coming in and out, especially when they do things like ring our bell at all hours to be let in the building, those keys cannot be copied and we have found the back door left with something in it so people can get in that way, which they have to climb over a fence to do or luckily arrive at the time a person with a key to access that alleyish way comes along. We don't answer it at night at all, unless we're expecting someone, and a few times Arjan wouldn't even let them in because he said he didn't know them, I got to tell them that one time. People from the city did come to check it out but when they came only the son was in the house.

It was almost 3 years ago when the first note was put on the door that there would be a sale of goods in the house to pay off taxes, Arjan said there was one before that also. That was the first of 3 since I've lived here, the latest was for a sale Feb 17th. Each time the sign was torn off the door and no sale happened. Arjan was home when people came to do things like cut off their satellite dish and take items from the home like guitars, last year. The past two weeks have been very quiet over there, no one has been living there and the middle of the week things started being removed from the house and we just thought they were finally giving up the place and moving everything out. I was most bothered when the cats came jumping on the bed with me at 12:40 a.m. yesterday, I could hear something and realized they were still moving stuff out. No one had been there all day and then they come particularly in the middle of the night to take stuff. Arjan was fast asleep snoring and they didn't wake him up or I'm sure he'd be out in the hall yelling at them about the noise they were making at that time of night.

When I got up around 8:30 I heard a big truck and it was delivering 2 empty containers in empty parking places. We knew this was probably a house uitzetten because it had just happened to someone on the other side, though it worked out so they weren't thrown out, nothing happened. Next the van with the people who pick out the things that can be sold arrived and the next thing we knew the entourage was knocking on their door. The entourage consists of a police officer, a neighborhood "agent" that carries the order of what is to take place, 3 men from the resale place that will take the items, and a lock smith. If the people can make a plan of payment or some such thing, it's different based on what it is, then they can stay with possibly nothing taken. We opened the door and Arjan was glad to let me tell them the story of how no one was there and how they had been taking things out since Wed and were doing it during the night. The lock smith got in and all they took from in the house were a couple ornate chandeliers. They hit a semi-jackpot in their storage beneath that had exercise equipment, what anyone would do with that in these little places I have no idea, a wall unit, a table and a couple other things. They only used one of the containers and left the empty one. I hope that means a cleaning agency will arrive next week to take everything else out. The balcony has a rusting weight bench and weights, a rolled up old carpet, a broken plastic pot, and a few other misc. items.

Arjan is praying that a nice Turkish family or couple will move in, while I'm praying for some Dutchies, which he believes and probably is impossible in this neighborhood. I told him in these times you never know, some Dutchie may need to trim their costs. It will probably be a couple months before we have new neighbors.

Just another adventurous day living in this neighborhood.

Now it's off to make American cheeseburgers for dinner...