I’m called Steven van Couwelaar and I ended up here 40 years ago.
“I was a squatter. In the late 1970s me and a group of friends occupied a printing works in the Red Light District that had been empty for about three years. In 1986 the City Council bought the property and refurbished it. I’ve been a tenant since then, with a great deal of pleasure. I’ll never leave. I’ve seen the neighbourhood change from rough and adventurous to touristy and busy. It’s better like this, because there used to be far too much drug dealing and drug use. Fortunately those days belong to the past.”
