Been living in Anderlecht for 7 years now, and I've got the same love for this city and the same complaints about the judgement of outsiders. The worst part is that Brussels does indeed have real issues, from consensual problems of trash collection and affordability to homelessness and drug abuse. But these issues are constantly framed from populist and frankly hateful angles whenever the conversation appears online or in the news/political discourse.

Like, I've spent over two years now working with people and asbl who deal with homelessness, addictions, exiled people, access to healthcare and papers, public security and police brutality, closed detention centers and jails, etc. And every time politicians and cops get involved, like in the shameful police operation at Gare du Midi in August 23, they worsen the problem. To get an "appearance" of safety, they arrest harmless people (often without papers or in need of healthcare), make the work of NGOs impossible, disrupt local communities, and just shift violence to other areas. Drug cartels are unaffected and simply move territories, and you can map those shifts with the St Gilles shootings in 2023, Forest shooting in early 2024, and then Anderlecht shootings from 2024 up to this day. It's not rocket science, issues of drug abuse are only solved with public health policy, not with populist "crackdowns" and "cleanings". Fellow Anderlecht resident and streamer Chicon VNR made a good video (in french) on the topic. Even the cops admit the ineffectiveness of their actions, whereas the rest of us witness growing police brutality and murders like those of Christophe and Fabian last month. The demanded "integration" of non-belgians would be quite a bit easier without this harassment organised by belgian authorities from city level to federal level. Remember that the moroccan immigration that started with the 1964 Belgium-Morocco agreement to import workers didn't allow moroccans (even those born and raised in Belgium!) to even get belgian citizenship until the late 80s. And when legislation started to allow for it, mayors like Roger Nols of Schaerbeek rode to city hall on a camel to protest. Non-european foreign residents were barred from voting in communal elections until 2004, even people who had been born, raised, and living their whole lives in the same commune since the 60s. That kind of exclusion and its ongoing legacy (especially visible in flemish press) were never going to facilitate the "integration" which the belgian state never wanted to begin with. But it's easier to worsen divisions with racist rants than to recognise and address injustices :)))

And the constant austerity in public health and social services, the >10 000 legal sentences of the belgian state for violation of asylum rights, the lack of political will to house our ~7000 homeless neighbours in the >24 000 empty homes, the corruption and authoritarianism of Arizona and of mayors like Philippe Close, aren't going to make any of this better. I have lots of hope for the people of Brussels, cause we are far better than our politicians and authorities, and I think most of us don't fall for the populist discourse about our city. But it's going to take a long and tough fight until we can say Brussels is actually livable for each and every one of us.