Houseboats

At night, gentle waves slowly rock you to sleep. By day, you soak up the sun on the outer deck. And if you feel restless, you toss in the ropes that anchor you to the dock and let yourself float towards new destinations. That is what life on a houseboat often seems like. Pure gezelligheid.

If only it was like this. In reality, life on an Amsterdam houseboat is quite different from the romantic image people might have. Above all, living on the water is a lot of work. And it is not remotely as cheap as it used to be.

It was in the 60's that houseboats became very popular in Amsterdam. Surely, they had been in and about the city for hundreds of years, given the city's proximity to the sea. But when the alternative wave swept through the crooked alleys of Amsterdam, it also seeped into the canals.

People who sought a different style of living, in accordance with the advancing hippie movement, discovered the houseboats for themselves. “There were no regulations on the water back then,” says Vincent van Loon, who owns and operates the Houseboat Museum on Prinsengracht. “It was also cheap to buy a boat. A lot of them weren't profitable anymore for shipping, so you could buy them to live on them.”

Together with the chronic lack of housing in the city centre of Amsterdam, the houseboat culture blossomed. A lot of boats found a new home on Prinsengracht and the Amstel – but they did not sprout up everywhere.

“In the inner city, there were a lot of offices and lawyers, the outer canals had a more lively atmosphere,” Van Loon says. “And the bridges on Herengracht and Singel were too narrow for houseboats.”

But a lot has changed since the 60s. Most notably, the houseboat culture has strayed from its liberal and alternative roots. “From hippies to yuppies,” Van Loon describes the evolution of houseboat occupiers over the years.

And not only the owners have changed. The city has introduced more than a few regulations for houseboats. The most restrictive one being that no new houseboats can be introduced, as the number is now fixed. There are 2,256 in the city, around 750 in the old centre. If you feel the hippie in you rising up, yearning for an alternative lifestyle, you have to find an already existing houseboat to buy, including its mooring.

The mooring is now the most valuable aspect of the houseboat. While the boat might be worth only a few thousand euros, the mooring, especially on the inner city canals, can be worth a couple of hundred thousand.

“Only rich people can afford a houseboat nowadays,” Van Loon says. In the last 30 years or so, the mooring fee has tripled. And with the popularity of the city, it could increase even further in the future.

In addition to price and space, Dutch bureaucracy makes it rather difficult to obtain a houseboat nowadays. “A houseboat is considered a 'roerend goed' a moving good,” Van Loon says. “It is not considered as real estate.” This distinction complicates obtaining a loan to buy a boat, since banks are sceptical about giving out money for roerende goederen.

On top of the costs for the actual acquisition of a boat and its mooring, there is plenty of maintenance. “If you want to come home after work and worry about nothing, then you should live in an apartment not on a boat,” says bed and breakfast operator Onno Bakker (56). Two years ago, he became a houseboat owner in the Westerdok area of Amsterdam and has since learned first hand what it takes to keep his boat in order.

Every three to six years, you might have to take out your boat for maintenance. Taking it out' does not mean cruising the canals, but rather getting two tugboats to pull the houseboat from the city centre to a shipyard. Moving through the narrow historic canals and beneath the bridges is a precision job, and a costly one. At the yard, the houseboat is then lifted up, so the bottom can be inspected, repaired if necessary and painted afresh. The cost of this procedure: a few thousand euros.

But not all the work is done at the shipyard. The houseboat owner himself must paint the upper half regularly. “Painting, painting, painting,” Van Loon sighs. “If you made it to the back of the ship, you can start again on the front.”

Fortunately, not all boats have to undergo the pricey maintenance in the shipyard. Only the ones made out of iron are called to the yard every few years. Boats with a concrete bottom can stay put. Unfortunately, however, you cannot change your iron boat into one with a concrete bottom. “It's mainly because of historic reasons,” Van Loon explains. The historical character of the boat should be preserved. And for tourists, the iron-bottomed boats are also kinder to the eye.

Thankfully, issues with the utilities are not as big of a problem anymore. Almost all of the houseboats are connected to the general system of electricity and heating in the city. Boats that are still capable of setting sail – or firing up the engine – have generators for the time offshore.

The boats are also very well insulated. “I don't think I have to pay more for heating now than I had to in my old apartment,” says Bakker. Van Loon adds, “When the canal froze this winter, it was actually not colder than usual.” And with a smile he says, “Plus, I finally got to clean my windows from the outside more easily”

But a few quirks remain when it comes to the utilities on board. If the winter sets in and maybe even freezes the canals once in a blue moon, some houseboat owners might be distracted by the ice skaters right next to their living room windows. They might forget to check if their water cables are properly insulated and heated. “If the frost gets to your water pipes, they can burst and your boat can sink,” Van Loon warns. It is not a lighthearted warning, Van Loon knows of at least one boat that sank this winter.

Then there is the issue of sewage on board. As with heating and electricity, most houseboats are now connected to the city system. But not all. Some are still using the 'old system' – which is a nice way of saying sewage is dumped in the canals of Amsterdam.

But before there are any appalled outcries, it is worth noting that the canals were more or less designed for this purpose. “Up to the early 20th century, even the houses used the canals for sewage,” Van Loon explains. But a new law now dictates that the canals should no longer be used in this way. The last boats are currently switching to the main sewage system.

However, the canals were never truly dirty, even though they were the sewage system of Amsterdam. “That's because the canals are being flushed every so often. New, fresh water is let in from the Ijsselmeer and pushes the old water out into the North Sea. And if you live on a houseboat, you know that you should only put organic things into the water.” Still, flushing out the dirty water into the historic canals of Amsterdam might run counter to the storybook notions people have about the life on a houseboat.

If the enormous amount of work maintaining the boat (plus its costs) and the sewage issues do not dismay a potential new houseboat owner, there are yet two more things to consider. What about the space on board? Or the movement?

“I had a lot of experience with boats before I decided to live on one,” Van Loon says. People without that experience might soon discover that the conditions on board are too narrow for them, or that they suffer from motion sickness.

Bakker and his partner fortunately do not get motion sick. But, they did have to get used to some unexpected surprises their houseboat presented them with. “One day, it was really stormy and one of the ropes that tie the houseboat to the deck broke,” he describes. “The boat suddenly turned and almost hit the one next to it. We were lucky it didn't.”

All right then. Mooring fee, maintenance, sewage, motion sickness – all that is not as ideal as outsiders think. But still, there must be an appeal to choose this lifestyle. And there is. Why else would Onno Bakker's mother-in-law seize every opportunity to take over the boat as soon as her son and Onno leave Amsterdam for a while.

“It's just not standard,” Bakker says. “We walked along this dock a few years ago and got very enthusiastic about living here. It was so open, so sunny.” So far, he has not regretted moving from regular housing to one that floats.

But while Bakker just moved in, Van Loon has moved out of his houseboat. After 22 years, he bid farewell to the lifestyle. “At the beginning, it really was romantic living here.” But after a while, especially after opening the Houseboat Museum and suddenly having to maintain two boats, the workload became too much. “It also became much busier on the canal,” he says, noting that his boat no longer served as a retreat.

When he talks about leaving his boat, there is slight sadness in his voice. “I miss living there during the winter. Not so much in the summer, because it was so busy.” With the changing houseboat culture, Van Loon regrets the disappearance of the older alternative generation. “I think it's a pity because I think people take better care of the houseboats when they live there permanently.”

One of the side effects is that newcomers are hardly involved in the houseboat organisations that exist throughout cities abundant with water, including Amsterdam. These organisations are important because they fight for houseboat owners' rights – and in many cases successfully so.

“Some of the past issues were about the raising of the mooring fees or the replacement of boats, because the city introduced regulations which called for more space between the boats,” Van Loon explains.

One of the fights the organisation won was about a rather curious rule the city tried to introduce. Boat owners were asked to pay a fee for the ground below their boats. “In Amsterdam, you don't own the ground underneath your house. So house owners pay a fee for the ground they live on. The city tried to introduce that same fee for houseboats, because we don't own the ground underneath the water where our houseboats are moored.” So, while houseboats do not qualify as real estate (making it more difficult to get loans), they were asked to pay the same fee as real estate owners.

But with yuppies taking over hippy territory, Van Loon fears the fight for houseboat owners will dwindle, and possible disadvantages will face them all. Yet this development has another perspective. Even though Bakker, a representative of these newcomers, is not invested in the organisation, he is not necessarily less interested in the alternative lifestyle. On the contrary, he says, “We are just very individualistic, as are our neighbours. They like to find things out for themselves.”

If you witness Bakker coming home from work early so he can read his newspaper nestled in the deck chair, you might understand this individualism. And you will understand why, despite more regulations and higher costs, the houseboats are still in such high demand. It is still a form of romanticised freedom. It is the sea breeze tickling your nose and the sun caressing your skin while the waves gently rock you. At least, when the sun actually shines in Amsterdam.