IN THE PAROOL - 'Nuisance-makers' Oosterpark also residents of city.

Opinion: 'Don't forget that 'nuisance-makers' in the Oosterpark neighborhood are themselves residents of the city'

Residents of the Oosterpark neighborhood feel unsafe because of homeless drug users. To improve the situation, users should be seen as fellow residents rather than as a problem, argues visual anthropologist Fay Toxopeus.

Written by: Fay Toxopeus, published in Het Parool, March 7, 2026 (Photos: De Regenboog Groep, Marlise Steeman)

The perceived nuisance of homeless drug users in and around the Oosterpark is a recurring topic of discussion. After reading the many news reports that have appeared recently, I feel the need to also share my perspective as a researcher and resident of Amsterdam East.

Last week a Parool reader wrote that she feels unsafe in "her" neighborhood around Oosterpark, where she moved two years ago. She describes how the increase in homeless drug users is causing a nuisance and argues that safety is a basic right.

She is not the only resident to speak out about this. In interviews on AT5 and at neighborhood meetings, you hear similar frustrations: residents see users openly doing their thing "on our square," "in our park," "in our street," and "in our neighborhood."

She is not the only resident to speak out about this.

Public space

When hearing such statements, I always ask myself the question: when does a public space actually belong to you? When may or can a citizen consider a street, park or square as 'mine'? Do people with homes and material possessions belong to a neighborhood more than others who are also there? And does this mean that basic rights like safety outweigh the rights of people who, often out of necessity, find themselves without a roof over their heads in that same neighborhood?"

I absolutely recognize the frustrations of residents. At the same time, I see another problem in the debate: the absence of a we perspective. When safety is formulated exclusively as an individual right - safety "in my street, my park, my square" - the solution seems to lie primarily in protecting the individual from evil. In this case: the homeless drug users of the Oosterpark, who are officially labeled "nuisance users. But when a group of people is still seen primarily as an objectified category - as "nuisance users" - an important realization is in danger of being lost: that these are also people.

This is not to say that the nuisance experienced by residents should not be taken seriously. The desire for recognition of a basic right such as safety is understandable and important. But when a group of people is seen only as a problem to be solved, their recognition as residents of the city also disappears.

Stripped of their humanity

This puts pressure not only on their basic rights, but also on their overall right to exist. With dire consequences. It is easily forgotten, for example, that many of these "troublemakers" have been moving around Amsterdam East for years, sometimes even decades. Stripped of their humanity, the logical solution against these nuisance-makers seems to lie in increasing enforcement that should thus 'remove' them from 'our' neighborhood.

If we were more open to not only focusing on our individual well-being, but also willing to better understand the extremely precarious living conditions of this group of people, we might discover that they too have felt and continue to feel unheard and unprotected by structurally failing policies.

This recognition does not mean that the problem of nuisance will immediately disappear. But as long as the debate is conducted primarily on the basis of what bothers or threatens the individual, other solutions remain off the table.

We perspective

Maybe part of the solution in fact lies in shifting from I-thinking to We-thinking. If residents feel so strongly about the neighborhood where they live, that also requires a sense of shared responsibility for that same neighborhood. Not just expecting solutions to come from above, but thinking for ourselves about how we as a neighborhood deal with neighborhood problems.

An ideal picture perhaps, but just thinking from a we perspective - and looking for joint solutions - can make a neighborhood like the Oosterparkbuurt take a different course.