Amsterdam: Cracking down on antennas

Housing corporations are taking steps against antenna dishes more and more often. Het Oosten, for example, paid off some people to take away their antenna. Ymere forbids antennas in some new housing complexes.

Now that foreign broadcasters can be received through broadband, digital television or fiber optics, corporations are finding that now's the time to tighten the reins and remove antennas. The antennas don't only disfigure the facades and harm the neighborhood's image, they also cause trouble to maintaining and washing the windows and can cause harm to people on the street if not placed correctly.

When signing the rental contract tenants usually get a brochure which stresses that antennas are only allowed following explicit permission from the corporation. All landlords ban placing an antenna on the facade. De Alliantie requires that even antennas placed in the back of the building won't be visible from the road. New complexes are often built with a central antenna on the roof.

For the past two year, Ymere barely allowed antennas, and never on the facade of the building. In various new buildings antennas are completely banned. Residents can use the public antenna on the roof for 7.5 euro a month.

Ellen Ros of Rayon says she hadn't had to deal with anybody putting up an antenna. The company invests several tens of thousands of euros per building block for the antennas and cables and though they don't get the money back, Ros says they do so for the quality of life and that it's worth the investment.

Ymere invests especially in apartments expecting many Turk and Moroccan tenants. The corporation has formed a work group to check out how they should proceed on this issue.

Het Oosten is also trying to come down on antennas. Placing an antenna on the facade has been tolerated for a while, since the company did not want to deny tenants from freely getting news.

Het Oosten is winding up a test in which residents of 108 residences got 100 euro if they removed their antenna. If they didn't put it on the balcony, they could earn another 50 euro. More than half of the antennas in the 108 residences in the Amsterdam neighborhoods of Zeeburg, Bos en Lommer and Nord disappeared. Later this year they'll check the exact results of this experiment and Het Oosten will see whether more tenants will get such an offer.

Angelique Josefa of Het Oosten says that the time is right for such measures: "In Osdorp we had a new housing project recently with mostly immigrant buyers and tenants. The buyers were fed up with the antennas that the people renting social housing had put up. 'We hadn't left Geuzenveld for nothing,' they said."

Source: Parool (Dutch)

See also: Dishes to go