Today is the last day for the streetwalking zone on the Europalaan in Utrecht, which must make way for housing. A new location has not been found, partly because local residents resisted. The prostitutes have nowhere else to go now.
The streetwalking zone in Utrecht is located on a service road along a busy arterial road between a hardware store and a company that rents out storage boxes. Cars drive past at a walking pace, and after a conversation with a sex worker, drive on to a finishing area in one of the fifteen garage boxes.
Vanessa van Eegeren worked here for fifteen years. She first worked behind Amsterdam Central Station, but when that became too unsafe, she decided to go to Europalaan. “There was a bus where you could get condoms, there was a free doctor and there were employees you could chat with,” she says in the statement. NOS Radio 1 News.
Living room for prostitutes
Van Eegeren understands that it sounds a bit strange to think back to her time as a sex worker in Utrecht with nostalgia. “I definitely don’t want to glorify it either, but it has been a big part of my life, and that part can be there too.”
Van Eegeren was a drug addict during her time in Utrecht. “It was an ideal place to work. “I could determine my working hours, prices and who I got in the car with. That felt much more like freedom to me.”
The bus later became a shack, operated by relief organization Belle. According to Minke Fischer van Belle, the shack functioned as a living room for the prostitutes. “We provide coffee or tea, a doctor is present twice a week and a social worker comes once a week to talk to sex workers.”
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