ITamara Kuschel said it started about 10 years ago. De Regenboog, the charity she works for in Amsterdam, has provided day shelter for homeless people, often people with severe drug addiction and mental health problems, since the 1970s.
Then, around 2015, a new client started to appear. “They don’t have the usual problems that homeless people have,” Kushel said. “They have jobs, friends. Their lives are similar in every way. But they can’t afford a house.
Some, she said, were not young. The oldest was 72 years old last year. “But we’re really just a sticking plaster.”
In the pan-European housing crisis, the Netherlands is at the next level. According to independent analysis, the average housing cost in the Netherlands is now €452,000, which is more than 10 times the average Dutch salary (or most common salary) of €44,000.
That means you’d need more than twice your salary to buy one. Nationally, home prices have doubled in the past decade; in more desirable neighborhoods, they have soared 130%. The cost of a new home is 16 times the average salary.
The rental market is equally dysfunctional. Private sector rents – which account for about 15% of the country’s housing stock – have soared. A single room in a shared house in Amsterdam costs 950 euros per month; a one-bed apartment costs 1,500 euros or more; and a three-bedroom apartment costs 3,500 euros.
Competition among those who can afford it, such as international expats, is so fierce that many pay monthly fees to an online service that searches real estate websites and waits for a few days after a suitable ad appears. Send text alerts within seconds.
Meanwhile, waiting lists in the social housing sector are roughly twice as long as in the private sector, averaging around seven years nationally, but in the larger Dutch cities, particularly Amsterdam, waiting lists can be as long as 18 or 19 years.
For young people, the task of finding and maintaining a home can be all-consuming. A 28-year-old doctoral student who asked not to be named said she moved seven or eight times in the first three years in the capital.
“The shortage is so severe and people are so desperate,” she said. “Tenants’ rights should be strong, but in reality… when I went out, the landlord came in and took pictures. I was bullied and physically threatened to move out.
She said no one she knew under 30 lived alone; many still moved twice a year. She now lives in a shared flat and wants to live with her partner, but both are afraid to move out because they might not be able to find a place.
“That was the worst,” she said. “As young professionals, all these next steps we were supposed to take at our age were just not possible. Everything was just…on hold. It’s disgusting that relationships are dictated by the real estate market.
Others are more fortunate. In a quiet neighborhood a 30-minute walk from Amsterdam Central Station, Lucas and Misty are among the 96 tenants (half of whom are young refugees with residence permits) of Startblok, one of five companies around the capital. One of the tenants.
Some Startblokkens are much larger, housing more than 550 young people in purpose-built “container homes”, some made of metal, some wood and sustainable materials, four or five stacked on top of each other. Others, like this one, are permanent brick residences.
After deducting housing benefit, the monthly rent averages 400-500 euros, and each tenant (who must be between 18 and 27 years old at the time of move-in) is entitled to his own studio of 20-25 square meters, equipped with his own Kitchenettes and bathrooms cost up to five years.
The hotel has bicycle storage, a bright common room with table football, a laundry room and a small garden with greenhouse. Startblok received about 800 applications when the studio opened for free earlier this year, project manager Jesse van Geldorp said.
Karin Verdooren, director of Lieven de Key, the housing foundation that launched the Startblok concept, said: “It’s about enabling young people to be self-reliant, build their own lives and build a network in a fundamentally broken housing market.”
Lucas, a German tutor, moved in last November. He was more than happy to pay half or less of the rent of many of his outside friends and loved the community spirit. Misty, 22, who is finishing her undergraduate studies, agrees.
“You are not alone,” she said. “You learn so much. The multicultural aspect is brilliant; I’ve met friends from Syria, Eritrea…I’m really grateful. It’s such a relief to know that I don’t have to look for a job at the same time as looking for a house.” tone.
But Startblokken, like several temporary accommodation schemes run by Kuschel’s De Regenboog for Amsterdam’s “economically homeless” people, is just a drop in the bucket of the Netherlands’ severe housing crisis.
How the country got to this point is a complex and hotly debated topic. The Netherlands had an estimated shortfall of 390,000 homes last year; it has already failed to meet its pledge to build nearly 1 million homes by 2030 – two-thirds of which will be affordable.
Some factors, such as historically low interest rates and more (often smaller) households, are beyond the government’s control. But experts say successive governments have been stimulating demand but failing to increase supply.
“The main features of the housing crisis – rising prices, rising inequality, a shortage of affordable housing and the penetration of foreign investors into the market – are the result of decades of questionable housing policies,” said Gregory Fuller of the University of Groningen.
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In the early 2010s, the pro-market Dutch government effectively abolished the Ministry of Housing and Planning and opened up the sale of shares in housing companies. This is partly because about 25% of the homes in the country’s four largest cities are owned by investors.
Measures to push prices up further include mortgage tax relief for buyers and others, measures designed to help younger buyers and ultimately existing owners invest in more properties. Meanwhile, housing construction subsidies have all but dried up.
There is an acute housing shortage in the rental market, with large numbers of tenants remaining in social housing despite earning above the maximum allowed due to a lack of affordable alternatives, causing private rents to soar.
The European Commission’s independent social policy advisory group said the Netherlands is in a “severe housing crisis” with “an acute shortage of affordable housing, leading to increased social exclusion and economic inequality”.
Politicians including Geert Wilders, whose far-right Freedom Party (PVV) led the way in November’s general election, have blamed asylum seekers, foreign students and environmental laws.
But in a damning report published in February, the UN special rapporteur on adequate housing said after a two-week visit that the Dutch government’s policy choices, not asylum seekers, were to blame for the country’s “serious housing crisis” or migrant workers.
“Another argument has emerged in the Netherlands that an ‘influx of foreigners’ is responsible for this phenomenon,” said Balakrishnan Rajagopal. He added that this crisis – both in terms of affordability and availability – has been “going on for decades.”
Among other factors, the rapporteur blames a lack of regulation of social housing providers, a lack of rent caps in the private sector and “insufficient attention to speculation and the role of big investors in the property market”.
Some recent government measures to mitigate the crisis may even have the opposite effect. Several cities have implemented 2022 laws prohibiting buyers of homes below a certain value (€530,000 in Amsterdam) from renting out their homes.
However, at least one academic study suggests the measure, designed to stimulate first-time homebuyers, benefited middle-income buyers but hit lower-income tenants as rents rose 4% as the number of rental properties fell.
Likewise, the government’s efforts to expand rent control, restricting more housing to social tenants earning less than €44,000 a year and capping their rents at €800, will only encourage more landlords to sell, thereby pushing up private sector costs. Remaining rent.
Whatever the cause, it can be tough for those in crisis. Luna, an elementary school teacher, had been living in a friend’s apartment while her roommates were away, but recently found a more permanent room after six months of searching.
“It’s really… frustrating,” she said. “I was born here, have applied for social housing since I was 18, work a socially useful job but face huge shortages and, at 33, still have to pay what I can Affordable rent for shared apartments.
More than 1,200 people applied to De Regenboog last year, Kuschel said. It helped 535 people find them homes in apartment buildings waiting to be renovated, homes that families had recently inherited but didn’t want to sell yet, empty schools and even vacant rooms.
One of them is Iris, a 47-year-old artist and nightclub worker, who last year had to move out of the Amsterdam apartment she had lived in for several years because a developer bought the entire building. Around the same time, she broke up with her partner.
“I was living with friends and I was couch surfing, but it wasn’t possible,” she said. “Now I’m sharing, in a place that won’t be developed for a year. I can be safe for 12 months. I think that’s what happens when people view property as an investment rather than a residence.
But Kusher said none of this is a solution. “We just want to prevent people from falling into a downward spiral of not having a safe home,” she said. “We were unable to offer a permanent one. A year later they were independent again.
She says the importance of a safe home cannot be overstated: “Without it, people cannot build families, build futures, put down roots, grow and thrive. They lose all perspective. Their lives are frozen.” That’s the tragedy.
