ENSCHEDE – Wesselerbrink Noordoost is not an attractive neighbourhood. The houses urgently need to be refurbished and the quality of life in general is poor.
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Gloomy words about this part of the Wesselerbrink, and they come straight from the town hall. The many hobby room houses in this part of Enschede urgently need to be renovated and insulated. But there are more problems: ‘Wesselerbrink Noordoost scores badly in particular in the area of quality of life.’
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Not happy with hobby room home
That is the answer to questions from D66 about plans to tackle this district first in the fight against energy poverty. Residents of hobby room homes in particular generate an increasing part of their income from the open air. The houses are old and moderately maintained. What exactly is going to happen, D66 asks.
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Off the gas…
The district generally needs extra support, the council acknowledges. Problems with drafts and cold have the highest priority. In the coming years, efforts will be made to improve the insulation of the houses. If there is money, these houses are at the top of the list and in 2030 they also have to get rid of gas. The houses must be renovated, made more sustainable and made natural gas-free and much better insulated. To this end, the municipality wants to draw up an action plan together with the housing associations.
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65 million euros
This involves huge sums, estimated at about 65 million. The municipality recently announced that it would ask for money in The Hague, but will that also happen now? And if not, then what? That is what D66 would like to know now. Identifying it is one thing, doing something about it is another. ‘Suppose the government does not grant the 65 million euros in subsidy, what are the plans then? Will nothing happen at all then?’
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House for sale? Pay yourself
That is vague, admits the college. Making a hobby room home more sustainable is estimated to cost roughly 50,000 euros. Some of the costs may be covered by all kinds of existing (national) schemes, but not everything. The owner-occupied homes, about half of them, also need to be renovated. In principle, residents have to pay for this themselves, but the average income in the neighborhood is low.
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If insulation is not possible, the energy bill will become higher and higher. Poverty thus leads to greater poverty. Help from the municipality is not to be expected, because there is in any case no budget for this. ‘Designing local schemes takes a lot of capacity and resources, while both are limited in availability.’
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