A Home, a Home, Who Can Find Us a Home?

The Amsterdam housing crisis, and what we can do about it.

Stijn Hoogvorst

Ahome, a home who can find us a home, a well-known phrase from a news item on the Dutch housing crisis of the 50’s, which captures the same sense of desperation home seekers in Amsterdam felt in 2022. Last summer was one of the most difficult periods to find accommodation in Amsterdam in recent memory. The number of free market sector housing units available was, and still is, at an all-time low, and the number of student housing and social housing units in the city and surrounding areas is completely insufficient. If you qualify for social housing, the waitlist in Amsterdam is 13 years and 17 years in Amstelveen.

Since the Netherlands is Europe’s second-most-urbanized country (after Cyprus), it stands to reason that the high demand for homes in the country’s capital would result in similarly high pricing. However, the housing prices being so elastic, meaning they adjust easily when demand grows, shows that we are dealing with a heavily liberalized and privatized housing market. To find some origins of this heated market, we have to look at policies that were implemented in the 90s. Until then Amsterdam, and the Netherlands, were known for having one of the best public housing systems in the world. Public housing was available for the lower incomes but also for people who have more average incomes such as teachers and nurses. This policy was in place to make sure that housing, which is a fundamental right in the Nether- lands, was available for all citizens at an affordable price, and that the percentage of income that people spend on housing would not get out of hand.

In the early 90s these policies grew to be a very large expense for the Dutch government and they decided to hand the responsibility of providing social housing to housing co-operations that would operate as a regular company. Due to a lack of regulation and questionable CEOs this led to the co-operations not fulfilling their core task and selling a lot of social housing units to private renting companies. One of the CEOs, who is now serving a jail sentence of 3 years, decided to claim a large portion of the co-operations’ profits. This CEO - later known as the Maserati-man - for buying a Maserati with the profits of the social housing co-operation, is often the main example used when trying to depict the state of social housing over the past 30 years. Since 2015, a new law has been in place to increase regulation, but the housing co-operations now have to deal with a shrunken portfolio and skyrocketed housing and ground prices.

The high buying market prices are the second problem. As a response to the 2008 financial crisis, the Dutch government decided to stimulate real estate purchases with several different incentive policies. On top of that the Ministry of Housing decided to start a campaign to attract foreign investors to invest in Dutch real estate. These policies led to the recovery of the housing market, but also started an unstoppable increase of housing prices for years on end, leading to it becoming more and more impossible to buy a house and to higher free sector rents. Dutch households now have one of the highest housing expenditures as a percentage of income in the EU, with middle to lower incomes spending more than half of their income on rents or mortgages. cent of their commutes. The lack of public transportation and the dominance of cars can significantly affect a city’s liveability, as it reduces mobility and limits green alternative options for transportation. tems. However, none of those is in the top rankings of the most liveable cities. That is because European cities also tend to be more walkable and bike-friendly than American cities. Additionally, many European cities feature pedestrian-friendly streets, with plenty of sidewalks. This makes it easy for residents to get around the city without needing a car. In contrast, many American cities are designed with cars in mind, and there are often fewer sidewalks and bike paths.

The last origin of the heated housing market is one that is underrepresented in the Dutch housing debate, Dutch people live relatively large. The average amount of square meters per person is 65, in Germany this is 45 for instance, a significant difference. Eurostat published that in Dutch cities 75 percent of people live in houses as opposed to apartments, in Spain and Austria this is not higher than 20 percent. Contributing to this issue, the Amsterdam city council decided a few years ago to install a cap on apartment sharing permits, reducing the options for students as well as other singles to live in a smaller space.

So what can Amsterdam do to turn this housing crisis around? To answer this question we can look at solutions other European cities are resorting to in order to battle their respective housing crises. For the long term, Vienna is the best example. Ever since the second world war ended the city council there has taken matters into their own hands.

Semi-private housing co-operations can loan money from the city council to build affordable housing while they are still committed to certain rules through this loan. They have to be non-profit organizations and are strongly checked and regulated. This way the state does not have to suffer from high costs of building, but simply has an account of lent out funds which will ensure affordable housing that funds itself.

However, setting up such a system takes time and is a difficult process. Therefore short term solutions are also needed. After fierce protests in Berlin in 2020 the city council decided to freeze all rents in the city for 5 years. Unfortunately this was struck down by the federal court the next year as only the federal government could regulate rents. This would therefore have to be regulated on a national level as it functions the same way in the Netherlands.

Lastly, reversing the sharing permit cap law is the most swift solution possible in the current market. With the amount of students in Amsterdam exponentially increasing since Brexit, the demand for shared apartments is higher than ever. International students have relatively more money available on average and significantly contribute to the increasing housing prices. Having more rooms available in the city as opposed to whole apartments would cater to the needs of students and increase the amount of people that can be housed in the existing real estate in the city.