How The Netherlands Failed At Housing Support me on Patreon: / oliverbahl Video by: Oliver Franke Research & writing: Charles Street, Oliver Franke Edit & Animations: Oliver Franke Full script & sources: docs.google.co...
The video doesn’t really explain why the Netherlands will fail at housing. It mainly focuses on available space, but there are many more elements at play here. Space is probably the least of our problems.
We have so much space when you look at the farmlands yes. But just yeeting the farms away to create build more houses/apartments? Yeah the farmers won't like that.
It's not that we have a lack of space in all parts of the country. Here, in the "far north", at the edge of the city I can watch as far as 25 km over empty farmlands, where hardly anyone is living, except for a few farmers. And we have a lot of similar areas in the country, mainly close to the borders.
As a Belgian we must say that the Netherlands is doing a very good job for us: young educated students are coming from the Netherlands because of the lower prices here.
@@bashdance In Belgium there are less rules that protect nature. A common saying is "De Belg heeft een baksteen in de maag", in the past the government encouraged Belgians massively to build. But after the recent floods there will be more laws and in 2030 we'll have a total ban of building new homes... It is also getting expensive hete but not at the rate of the Netherlands.
@@bashdance Because Belgium is not as incompetent as the Netherlands in the last decade. The Dutch are actually failing on so many levels, but because we still riding a wave of the decades before that was far more succesful for many people in those times, today most young people cannot afford a house not able to get a mortgage for one. This is aside the fact that there are not enough houses for people to find. Hence the crazy rental prices. And this is just some of the many issues. We have a fairly good income on average, but plenty people don't have that and cost of living in the Netherlands is actually high. And I don't think this is not going to be solved anytime soon And yeah. Let's not fool ourselves how much we protect our nature in the Netherlands. The core of it all is still that we have the lowest forest cover in all of Europe with the only competition from UK both around 10-11% forest cover. Vastly below Europe's average. Oh yeah! but we have a park here and there!! Whoohoo. Yeah. Have you have been in a park where 100.000 other people are having the same idea to have a stroll? Nature in the Netherlands is a reasonable joke.
There's more than enough space. It's purely a political problem. About half the population and about 100% of people in charge are homeowners that have no incentive for cheaper houses (actually quite the opposite). Add some NIMBY's to the mix and changing the zoning of a piece of land to something that would allow it to even apply for a building permit becomes next to impossible. Even with the recent price increase of materials, building a flat costs very little per home. We're just not allowed to actually do it.
You forget that home owners pay their taxes bases on the value of their houses. My taxes have increased by 80 % over the last 5 years. And I do not care about the profit value (overwaarde), because it is only on paper. I only cash in when I sell my house and start living in a foreign cheap country. The only house price rise I would like to see is inflation correction. No. the government is responsible for building sufficient houses, art. 22.2 of the Dutch constitution. But has failed to build enough houses and rising immigration makes it worse. Yes, 1 million new Dutchies added in the last decade and they do not live in tents on the Veluwe national park. The government has always restricted building outside of municipality limits. Except for a few Vinex new neighborhoods. But finally farmers are being kicked by nitrogen standards, so building of new neighborhoods will start soon.
@@mardiffv.8775 Hmm yes yes. I´m sure people don´t care about making money because they have to pay 0.45% taxes... Just to then move it to a different country where their money goes even further.... are you out of your mind?
as a dutchie, I'd like to add that PART OF the real problem is the fact that foreign investment companies are buying up real estate by the hundreds of units, especially in Amsterdam and Utrecht, and then not doing anything with these assets and letting the buildings sit empty. There is no regulation against this. In fact the government ACTIVELY ENCOURAGES this. And don't even get me started on Mr.Bernard of the royal family who owns nearly half of Amsterdam and also has decided to leave the majority of the buildings empty rather than having them be used for their intended purpose. :) owning a 2nd or 3rd house has nearly no taxation, it's high time this changes. no family should own more real estate than what they need, especially in a country that has a higher population density than India.
If they are investing they probably would like to see some returns...no way they are just gonna buy a property and then just letting it sit there without renting(or at least attempting to rent). Probably the issue is they are asking for a very high price, and maybe the apartments that are being built and bought by these firms are generally 3 beds which would be luxury given how bad the market is.
So investors spend a ton of money on a house....buying it from a builder....so then the builder......DOESN'T USE THAT INCOME TO BUILD ANOTHER HOUSE??? Why not is the real question. Government making it too hard for people to build.? There are reasons.
Yes it is one of the biggest problems in our country now. And the government isnt doing a lot to prevent the worst case scenario. And thanks to dutch bureaucracy it is taking far too much time to build this many houses. I think they need to view this as a national crisis, like the post war period, when building lots of affordable housing was succesfull
@@bopndop2347 on the scope doesnt do anything really. There is talk about this problem. But talking about it doesnt do much, it creates an illusion that it's gonna be resolved in time, while thats not going to be the case. Edit: there are some things that are done of course, but it's a droplet on a hot grill.
Total total lies. I've been to Holland, and I've NEVER seen a single homeless person ever. Stop trolling y'r nasty miserable lies about good and honourable Dutch folk
@@guff9567 Ever have been to Rotterdam South or West? You will see homeless and junkies in the evening and early morning, especially near local Salvation Army locations there are a lot of Junkies. We got a law that prohibits begging or loitering. So most homeless people get clustered near homeless shelters and other social work projects.
And well, take in account that because we have the increased "vergrijzing", we'll be having too many empty houses in a few years that are still too expensive for starters to buy. And what also still happens a lot... A lot of houses are being build here, all too expensive for starters... *Facepalms*. I really don't understand my country sometimes...
@@julesverne4561 More actually, people keep turning a blind eye to the reunification of the family. And those families aren't just one or two members but more like 15 or even more like in Germany where some families bring about 30 family members over.
@@balabanasireti Doesn't matter if some cases are rare when you take into account that in general, a foreigner has more children and relatives than a western person, so that means you can still multiply that immigration number by one or two. In the Netherlands, our welfare state is on the brink of collapse when you can't even provide normal healthcare anymore, the same can be said for England. Both countries are swamped with refugees that feel entitled to everything, and most don't do much in return. Criminal numbers show most criminals are foreigners, and most people that don't pay for their healthcare are the same. Bankrupting a nation to be altruistic is a moron's way of running a country.
I'm a romanian student studying in Eindhoven. Some really good friends of mine were planning on studying at TU/e, got accepted, did all the paperwork but in the end they couldn't come to the university since they could not find housing. They spent over 5000 euros in the process of applications/housing agencies, rent while they physically went to these agencies to find housing and so on. What a shame... As for myself, I did find housing, but the price is enormous. 1350 euros per month for a student is horrid.
There is a solution though... Rent something in Belgium?! Being 10 kilometers from the TU/e is an option? Not sure if they would allow people with no fixed income to rent though, but if you're paying 1350 EUR, you must have some income? So hmmm.... Ever considered that route???
@@ABC-ABC1234 Right, I have searched on a range of 50km for around 1-2 months and this was the only place I found. I'm not quite sure you understand that I got lucky. A lot of student that were accepted at the university had to go back home in their countries because they couldn't find a place to stay that was eligible to be registered at the municipality.
@user-tt3yj4lt4u Inca o chestie legata de transportul in comun. Pretul ar fi exact acelasi daca as sta in alt oras si as face naveta. Lucru la care m-am gandit. Also, "parinti cu bani"? Muncesc full time si am propria companie.
I like how the video does not mention the exorbitant rents. Leaving in a small city, outside of the main areas still costs 800 per month for a small studio.
800 euro? 😅 Where did you get that from? It doesn't matter where you live in NL, rent is high even in the remotest village because they can. Tax paying foreigners are taking the burden of Netherlands growth, but they're treated as slaves who live to suffer and build Netherlands economy.
@@ardmrad9278 Those tax paying foreigners are paying 30% less then Dutch citizens. They are a privileged class. It is the Dutch poor who is suffering most. Social housing has a waiting list of years. Nearly all Dutchman register for social housing the day they turn 18. The foreigner is not the foundation of the Dutch economy. They are also treated much better by the government than the Dutch poor. Especially in this age of libertarian control of government.
I moved away from the Netherlands in 2017. I thought about moving back when my girlfriend broke up with me here in Austria. But after 2 minutes looking online I found out there wasn't anything affordable to rent. Even in the east (Gelderland) where my family lives its hard to find something good and affordable. I'll stay in Austria for now.
I hear this misconception being parroted everywhere on the internet, but the Netherlands are NOT the second largest exporter of food in the world, they are the second largest exporter of agricultural goods (mostly flowers and seeds for sowing), indeed in value, not in tonnes (flowers and good genetics seeds are expensive). I would be so happy if one of these days, at least one youtuber will get this right.
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Biggest problem for housing in the Netherlands is priced. Home ownership is heavily subsidized driving house prices up when There’s little to no new homes being built.
ANd the immigrants get priority housing while the native dutch guy can wait 10-15 year. but no mention in the video about that.... wonder why.... cause with a population growth f 1.7 housing should not be an issue....
This is indeed a lie. In the Netherlands middle class people are allowed to grant their children one hundred thousand or so euro’s to help them buy an apartment. This is not a subsidy.
You're really skimming over the details here. There is a whole other video of room with details here. The biggest cause for the housing crisis in the Netherlands is what we call the "stikstofcrisis" or Nitrogen crisis. Simply put, every municipality has a nitrogen budget. To build all forms of infrastructure, be it houses, roads of nature reserves, they are required first to reduce emissions of nitrogen, before being allowed to "spend" nitrogen in their budgets. On top of that, they have to reduce nitrogen emissions across the country by up to 70% in places. All to preserve the biodiversity across our nation. This means in effect, that both farmers and industry have to be closed, before being allowed to spend the emissions room thus created, on housing or roads. Naturally, people don't want to hear that they are out of a job because their company produces to much pollution. And thus the national politicians in the Hague don't want to burn themselves on the issue. And so they have forwarded the hot potato to the municipalities. Again, they do not want to burn themselves on the topic either and so the blame has shifted to the provinces. By summer of 2023 the provinces have to come up with a province wide plan to fix the problem of nitrogen emissions. However, to make it even more of a political problem, on march 2023, the dutch public are asked to vote for the provinces political parties. Usually people care very little about this particular vote and typically only about 30% of the nations voters show up for it. On top of that, it's usually the left side voters who want to change things and they vote in favor of solving the "stikstofcrisis" by removing businesses and farmers based on their emissions, and right side voters who want to keep everything the same. But with the past 12 years having had a center and right wing government in place, and this being just 1 of the many issues that the Netherlands struggle with, there is no telling what the voters will do. This entire crisis was in fact started by the courts. In the Netherlands, the courts can overrule the government and political parties if the government doesn't follow its own rules. The government has forced itself, partly by European laws, but also by its own laws, to reduce emissions, and are now forced to act upon it.
The housing crisis isn't caused by the nitrogen crisis at all, it's much older. We've been discussing it for 15 years now. Also, saying that it was "caused by the courts" followed by an explanation of the rule of law every democracy has is very odd. To be clear, it was caused by the agrilobby and Henk Bleeker, who devised an illegal policy that came down to "you don't actually have to keep your emissions down, you can just pinky promise you will do it in some far off future land"
@@koffiegast VVD is a center right party, D66 are a centrum party, and CDA and Christenunie are both right wing christian based parties. Notably, both CDA and Christenunie are parties supported by many farmers and Christians and so called "silent majority" voters. As for left ideals, we have plenty of ideals left that aren't on the agenda of the current cabinet. To name a few, we would like the government to stop subsidizing fossil fuel. We would like public transportation to be free of charge. We would like a solar panel on every roof, including social housing. We would like to tax fossil fuel emissions, and subsidize electric driving and infrastructure. We would like to tax people equally, which would make rich people pay more, and poor people to pay less. We would like to make healthcare costs to be dependent on income so that everyone can be treated equally. And the list goes on for a while, but I'm sure you get the gist of it. None of these ideals are currently part of the plans of the current cabinet. Instead, they subsidize fossil fuel companies for 17,3 billion euro's a year. Electric driving subsidies are being reduced every year, and they also want to reduce subsidies for solar panels. They let economy rule over people. Straight from the VVD book. And with both CDA and Christenunie refusing to even talk about the stikstof crisis and what it entails, it gets very hard to fix some of the biggest problems this country faces.
@@MartinDeHill I didn't write it was the only cause, just that it is currently the one thing that stops everything else. We're not allowed to build new houses, or roads, because of the Nitrogen crisis. And until that gets resolved, there won't be any new houses built in the Netherlands. I see this issue every day, there are 2 large plots of land in my own municipality that have been ready for building for over 5 years now. Going all the way back to the courts decision of 2017. The plans are all ready. The plots have been sold. But nobody can start building there, because there is no room in the Nitrogen budget of the municipality. None of the right wing parties of my municipality dare to touch or even talk about the subject, for fear of voter backlash. In the municipality i live are very few farmers, but there are plenty of companies that produce to much nitrogen. The only way to fix the nitrogen crisis is to close companies, which will cause thousands of job losses, and thus, nobody wants to move on this for fear of voter backlash. And so they pretend its not their problem, and pass the hot potato to the provinces.
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I was homeless in Breda for 4 months and it was mentally quite draining, to be honest. In my class, if 90 dozens of people were homeless for at least a month
Ireland has a huge housing problem too and the government responded with rent controls (small landlords sold their rental accommodation) and incentives for investment funds to build apartment blocks (they built apartment blocks for rich international students and IT workers). Our housing market is failing.
Well the Irish government needs to finish what the English started and completely replace the Irish with vibrant diversity with authentic ethnic cuisine because diversity means strength. 😂😂😂
Also the impracticality of building outwards instead of upwards especially with how garbage public transport is in Ireland (at least compared to other rich western countries). Houses literally in different counties are practically the only things available. The fact that the Dublin Metro Area, an area home to around 1.5 million people still doesn't possess even a basic metro line is honestly insane. Trams are lacking, the Dart only services the coast. All of this just means more traffic for people trying to get to work from their homes which are located like 25+km away. Honestly, the only solution for Dublin in my opinion, is to modernise the centre and start building some high density apartments. There's too many people, and while Dublin can accommodate, placing them in the middle of Kildare is hardly a solution.
Rent control is the worst solution to any housing issue. Building more units and incentivizing people to live away from the hot spots. The solutions are easy in theory but the difficulty is the politics around it. Government can try to increase more new units to be built but some residents who own homes might try to stop it (NIMBY) because they already bought in and don't want changes, especially if the change will reduce prices of housing units. Incentivizing people to live in other parts of the country or even other parts of the metro get tricky -- there will arguments of WHERE they should try to get people to move, HOW much money to spend and HOW they will do that.
And immigration. It's funny that this isn't even mentioned anywhere in all these comments. This year alone over 100.000 people have migrated to this country. The past 10 years we broke record after record in terms of immigration. And now there are shortages? Imagine that.
@@WhoopsieDayZ very simplistic and populist take. You forget to mention that students where taken in but no housing was allocated. This wouldn't be an issue if they would've build better and smarter. And privatized less.
@@Pietra430 true, that's the basis of populism. Hitler was "observing what happened" jews = rich, others poor = jews problem. While in reality banking was an dirty job in the middle ages and they where forced into it. Populism is looking but not seeing. Baudet won in the provinciale staten yet he didn't take his seats. He doesn't have to, his voters don't even know how it works. So he throws away votes like spoiled milk and catches new ones the next session. He perfected playing the lower classes for big $$$. He's just as bad as the VVD & groenlinks.
@@JJadx Why do you people go through all these mental gymnastics just to keep importing non educated refugees and Poles? Why do you want this so much? Explain your fetish.
2:21 that is a part of why they said this universety's and HBO's get paid per student so they actively seek out international students to use as extra money for funding its not just because of there being no homes available
This is a huge problem, indeed. The universities will not stop bringing in more and more students until this incentive is gone. In groningen, my faculty had quintuple its intake in 5 years. There weren't enough houses back then, and there sure aren't any now, with everyone blaming someone else.
A student studying Dutch had to do her master's dissertation about a Dutch renaissance poet in English on the basis of an English translation. Dutch universities are basicallly being sold out. This is not about getting the most talented foreign students and doing subjects in English because the discipline is mostly in English. This is about dropping the education levels, wrecking the language and give Dutch students a disadvantage.
Groningen unfortunately has the same issues. It's nearly impossible to find a place as a student (we've had students sleeping in tents, for example, and there are emergency places for students every year), and now that I'm 26 and have a job, I'm still struggling to find my own place. Buying a house is too expensive, vrije sector prices are incredibly high and there is a serious lack of sociale woningen. But I do think that you're right about other cities having potential! I also think that it would help if we converted empty buildings into living spaces.
@@meowrit We should definitely turn empty buildings in living spaces. Why not build cheap small homes like university dorms where hundreds of students can get a home. You're right about Groningen being chaotic as well. I think all the studentensteden are becoming overcrowded with too little opportunities for small affordable housing. Delft is also struggling with housing its students. They even tell foreign students to stay away because of the housing issue.
You should have come here 5 years ago. I bought my house in Gouda for just 117,000 euro. The same house is now worth 265,000.... You just missed the bubble...
I think i need to move to Denmark, im 18 and live in the Netherlands, I study but i have to live with my parents. Even if I finish school there is no place to live
I studied in Aarhus, Denmark and it was honestly no better. I got lucky with a student apartment but some of my friends had to live in trailers for months until they found some accommodation. This was a few years ago so maybe things are better now, I don't know. I have since moved to Sweden, and things a only slightly better here.
There are also a lot of problems with the neoliberal policies of the ruling parties as their privatisation of the housing market has given big (often times foreign) investors a lot of wiggle room in which it has become acceptable to see housing as an investment more than a need of the people. One result of that is the fact that these investors consiously keep housing empty to drive up the prices of their other properties in those areas. For example: Amsterdam has more empty buildings (around 20k last time I checked in 2022) than it has homeless people. The housing market has been broken by the capitalists. The housing crisis would be much less severe if landlords were to actually cooperate instead of only accumulate
" The housing crisis would be much less severe if landlords were to actually cooperate instead of only accumulate" This is fundamentally the problem with capitalism. They must be made to bend the knee or risk hurting our whole society with their evil greed.
@@zipzap8937 it's the left wing laws and policies that have caused this....not capitalism. There are plenty of rooms people would be willing to rent in the country. Except it's nearly impossible to evict someone now. They can make as much noise as they want, smoke pot everyday in the house, bring as many people over at all hours of the night, and cause as much damage as they want and the government has no law protecting the home owner...who has taken on massive debt in order to feel safe and have their own retirement looked after. Ive heard of this happening sooo many times it's a joke. Students ALL could be housed just in peoples homes who want a bit of extra money to pay the mortgage. But it's not worth the risk. The tenant has more rights than the homeowner. Period.
From January effectively all universities stopped active recruitment of foreigners, but they have jointly stated their disapproval. At my university in Breda, it's a growing problem that students cannot start the academic year as they have no accommodation. For me, it took till December till I found a place, some rooms have 600-700 applicants within a day.
@@Vikkin1218 Seems strange. I’m new here and I was advised to not look for rooms on university tows. But in my home country, universities have hostels for students where a certain percentage of them can reside and study.
"Will fail" implies it will happen in the future, except it has already failed for over 15 years. Houses are simply unaffordable for the large majority of the populace and it's become just a way of investing instead of providing a primary need.
If 65% of the country is farmland, while 10% is homes, it seems that they have no shortage of land at all. Converting just 5% of the land from farm to homes would increase relative livable space by 50%? Reducing farmland from 65% to 55% would literally double livable space. I'm sure there's more to it, but these zoning laws were created early 20th century to assure national food security, which seems incompatible with how current markets work and how large the current dutch population is.
We don’t want to destroy our beautiful landscapes just so that a tiny minority of privileged progressive whites can continue their addiction with importing hundreds of thousands of non educated Africans, Arabs and Slavs.
Unironically, with a law against unexploited land you could see a lot of the "farmers" just giving up the land because they can't do anything with it. But even then, unless there are proper protections against free market exploitation the crisis won't get much better.
As a Dutch student being in your mid 20s and having to live at home is mentally tough. My college is in the most expensive city I the country so I can either pay 600 for 1 room or stay at home and help my mom out. It's still funny that we had leave our home and live in an overpriced shack in a shit part of town while young refugee men get newly build homes right across the house we were kicked out of.
@@Unteragen-rg1so I mean, yeah. The country shouldn't be importing any immigrants at all if they can't provide enough housing for even their domestic population. The insane immigration rates that have existed for decades are the main reason why cities have a housing crisis to begin with.
We’ve been failing for years. And a big part of it now is the way the system admits houses to people. For anyone under 23 it’s nearly impossible to rent a place let alone buy one. Yet most of the stuff being built these days is purchase houses and not rent. You have to be 23 in order to gain back a part of the rent you pay which for a lot of people is a huge part of their income. I’ve been signed into a housing market site since I was 18 which was 3 years ago and I’m still nowhere near a chance of finding an apartment for these reasons. It also doesn’t help that refugees get priority on even some of the most high end apartments availible. And all the government does is build new properties that won’t be availible for lower incomes and increase the prices
@@montazownianr1 The party that has been the main one in the last 3 governments plus the current one (the right-wing, neoliberal VVD) has done exactly that: removed legislation for housing cooperations, opened up the housing market to foreign real estate investors and gutting social housing. For a large part that method is why we're in this shit state of affairs. I'm not necessarily saying throwing more government involvement at the problem will magically help, but the famed invisible hand of the free market hasn't done ordinary people any favours. (and not to be overly snark, but if a response includes the argument ''socialism is when government does things'' I'll assume you don't know what you're talking about)
you forgot to mention that major european cities are overcrowded by foreigners. Netherlands for example is packed by Turks and Marrocans. Therefore you have a low supply but high demand.
The area of the Netherlands isn't shrinking. The population isn't increasing, Dutch women have far fewer than 2,1 children on average, so the population actually shrinks. This problem has only 1 problem: immigration. Every year, another hundreds of thousands immigrants enter this country, to the point that it doesn't only cause a lot of social frustration as the integration failed, but there also just isn't enough physical space.
The Netherlands is already failing at housing my brother is almost in his 30s, and he still lives in home, though finally he might see his own house soon.
Interesting video. In regard to certain things, the Dutch can be divided into 2 clear groups, the social/subsidized housing (rent), and the private market (rent and buying). A third of the market is social housing, which is a very high rate compared to other countries. Meanwhile, the other 2/3rds are private. Both have their own set of issues. There is a lack of social housing due to massive demand and not enough being built as it is much more lucrative to build private market houses (also caused due to the outrageous prices). This means very long waiting times, and meaning that if you are in a non-urgent situation (for example staying with your parents is considered a stable living environment in most cases so you won't get any priority) you can wait a decade. That is not sustainable. Due to the massive price differences between the capped prices of social housing and uncapped prices of the private market, many people stay inside their subsidized apartments even though they already earn far above the income threshold. So a lot can be connected to the massive costs in the private market, but the problems are not the same. To tackle these issues the government is actually putting a lot of money towards building additional homes, both in the private market and subsidized market. There need to be better incentives for companies and municipalities to build more subsidized housing over the private market, but there is a shortage in both. Luckily the market is cooling down again a bit, leading to lower prices, but this could also lead to lower demand to build additional homes, so the government needs to tackle that problem decisively. The biggest problem currently is probably not incentives, but the difficulty to build new houses and capacity. This is due to very strict regulations, on top of new strict laws around nitrogen emissions. It takes a very long time to get approval and due to very tight rules, it is also difficult to get approval. This process needs to absolutely be dealt with if the government wants to reach its goals. There need to be more government employers to deal with permits so that approval can happen much more easily and quickly. Lastly, there is the problem of labor capacity. There is a huge lack of construction workers in The Netherlands, so these workers will need to be found in other countries (Eastern Europe). That process should be made easier, but an argument against that is that you are adding to the problem. As you are taking in more immigrants to fix a shortage of homes, but all those immigrants need homes as well, leading to an even greater shortage in the end. To tackle the problems of the missing middle between the private market and social housing, the government will introduce new homes with capped rental prices called "middle rent". That means it will be divided into "low rent" (social/subsidized rent), "middle rent", and the private market (renting and buying). Also, the government has a plan of building around a million additional homes by 2030. They have made a lot of funding available to reach that goal, but there are some massive challenges along the road which I mentioned above. Space is not really a major issue really, only around 13% of The Netherlands is covered by build-up areas (including industry, semi-build-up areas, etc.). A problem could be that a relatively large share of the Dutch population lives in single-family homes instead of apartments which are also relatively large (for Europe), even in highly urban areas. Many Dutch are opposed to living in apartments. Even though multi-generational homes are not really a thing here, there are relatively few people per household in The Netherlands. That leads to a very high living space per person in The Netherlands (65 m2 per person), and the quality of (new) housing stock is very high which makes things extra expensive. Maybe that is just a luxury we cannot afford in one of the most densely populated and in-demand countries in the world if there already is a massive shortage of homes. Also, keep in mind that around 70% of the population lives in a home that is owned, so they don't really have any interest in decreasing house prices. Most incentives go where the demand is, and those are the 300k to 500k relatively large private market single-family homes with a garden in an urban area. Not really sustainable, but that is what most people want. But in the end unsustainability like that makes it worse for everyone. Also wouldn't set your hopes on the population stagnating. The population of The Netherlands grew with nearly 230k in 2022 even without natural growth. Whenever excess death decrease again I fully expect natural growth to be slightly positive or around 0 again, but immigration will stay high. Eventually, the baby boom generation has mostly died off and after that the share of elderly people will stagnate, meaning slightly higher natural growth again. In the end, the statistical models from Statistics Netherlands show that the coming 50 years the population of The Netherlands will keep on growing under standard circumstances. We need to prepare for that, so also with our housing stock. I don't worry too much about the water problems. It is one of the few areas where the government never sits back and lets things happen and fix them afterward, they tackle these problems proactively since the Delta projects under the new Deltaprogram which has to make sure the Netherlands is prepared for climate change and droughts (water shortages). With the deltaplan for large rivers including the room for the river project. The program will also include the "hoogwaterbeschermingsprogramma" (HWBP), which is the largest dyke strengthening operation since the deltaworks. It will tackle the most critical areas first and ensures that The Netherlands will be adequately protected by the norms of 2050. So all dykes will be upgraded to that norm and inspected every 12 years and strengthened when necessary. The HWBP program always looks at the medium term looking 30 years forward with their inspections. Short-term supervision is the responsibility of waterschappen, and there is also a long-term vision.
don't you have anything better to do with your time? I don't even wanna know how many characters this is. Learned a lot tho. I study at KU Leuven in Belgium and the housing there is really affordable - for Western Europe standards. I pay 350 euros per month for a student housing unit with a shared kitchen. Had no idea it was this bad in the Netherlands.
Good analysis. I would also add the low interest rate and easy borrowing of the past years and also the money printing by the government wich caused high prices for house. Excellent points made by you!
They should stop taking in refugees until there is enough housing for dutch youth, then for refugees waiting for a house in the country and only when that is fixed take in new ones. Also people should be getting priority for a house in their 'home region' so they can stay closer to family, work and friends. What happens now is that rich seniors sell their Amsterdam apartments and buy family homes in rural areas for 'cheap' leaving no place for local youth to go.
It's not just refugees. It's immigrants in general. The vast, vast majority of immigrants are not refugees. Even most proclaimed refugees aren't actual refugees.
You didn't really explain why. As a planning student, studying in Groningen, the reasons are quite a lot, and would need a long video. Starting from Dutch architecture to the Netherlands becoming an economic powerhouse and to the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis.
The problem is using existing space. On the south of Den Haag (and any other side of den Haag) for example, there is new housing development - "DUYN - Half vrijstaande woning" twin home for just 880k Euros. Few of them take up space of an apartment complex that can accommodate from 40 up to 200 separate families(I now live in the 12th-floor apartment complex with roofed parking space and 160 apartments in total where you could probably fit 20 tight-packed single-family housing). And these new housing developments are popping up everywhere, instead of building affordable (800k euros is not affordable at all) apartment complexes they are fulfilling rich people's dreams. And now Dutch gov want to seize agricultural land to make more not affordable housing - a genius idea when we could have food shortage/expensive food.
In Groningen they do build a lot of small apartments, so I could give you ample of examples why your picked example isn’t really true over the broader approach to this problem. Besides, the farmers in the Netherlands that will be bought out are mostly animal farmers. They don’t sell a lot to the Dutch people, mostly to other countries. We for example import beef from South America. We would barely notice that farmers are bought out, but nature will definitely improve
@@ECTCalvin i do not think that a lot of people want to settle in Groningen, but most would like Randstat. I just showed my point of view in the area, in example rijswijk buiten, New developments in Rijswijk Strijp and many others are just single/twin or in the line single family housing. I bet you could fit there many of apartment complex that would help in solvong the problem, because this approach will for sure not.
You're not addressing the elephant in the room. The area of the Netherlands isn't shrinking. The population isn't increasing, Dutch women have far fewer than 2,1 children on average, so the population actually shrinks. This problem has only 1 problem: immigration. Every year, another hundreds of thousands immigrants enter this country, to the point that it doesn't only cause a lot of social frustration as the integration failed, but there also just isn't enough physical space.
I got super super lucky with finding a room that's at least under the 800 Euro range and taking into the account the amount of expensive apartments along with internet scams it just adds to the stress, coming from indonesia and never been to Europe at all it nearly crushed me when I got accepted into a tedious numerus fixus university program and not being able to find housing or any type of housing whatsoever. I got lucky enough to find the room through connections within the Indonesian community and seeing how my expat friends within my program even my dutch friends as well struggle to find housing made me feel super super grateful. It's kinda really saddening to me that up until now since I moved into the Netherlands from September 2022, some students back home are still asking around for housing in the community WhatsApp or group chat. Hopefully the dutch government will prioritize the housing crisis or try to resolve it as much as they can otherwise students similar like myself will miss their chance of studying in a wonderful country like this.
As an American who was planning to move to The Netherlands I aborted my plans last year when I learned just how bad the housing crisis was.... it was kind of shocking since The Dutch are known for being the best planners in the world and having really good foresight but it seems this is a problem that has been building for the past decade or more and has now reached a critical point. Amsterdam though is no longer affordable unless you're wealthy. Rotterdam is becoming the same. College students are really struggling and non rich Dutch are not happy either. A few RU-vidr's I had been following even moved out of the NL. I love The Netherlands but living there long term would not be feasible or affordable most likely. Now I'm researching moving to Germany and Scandanavia instead.
Germany is going throgh the same development like NL. NL is just a few years ahead. In Germany there are many regions, where you can not find any affordable house anymore. In 3-4 years this situation will be probably in all areas of the country.
Germany is manageable, if you don't aim for the big, popular cities like Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Köln ect. But e.g. Kiel, Flensburg and Lüneburg are relatively affordable and Hamburg is always nearby. You will still need to hustle for your studio, but it is doable :)
You should never be looking for tge most expensive city. Thats the problem a lot of foreigners make is that they want to live in amsterdam. Thats literally the most populair and most expensive area so of course that means that the prices are high and not much availabke
Another big problem is the immigration crisis from the Middle East... Our government just refuses to stop the immigration for people from the Middle East. There are waaaaaay too many refugees in the Netherlands (record after record immigration) and our government just won't take resposibility like for example Denmark does....
exactly, but most people can't see or won't talk about it. it's ok to set a limit. it's better to help a (small) group in a meaningful way than trying to help everyone and failing everyone.
I'm certain they'll find a smart solution soon. I've visited almost every EU country while working, and the Netherlands was the golden choice if I ever had to migrate to the EU region.
I'm certain they won't find any sort of a solution soon. The exorbitant prices are raking in way too much money for the housing speculators and the buy to rent landlords. There was a housing shortage when I came to live here 50 years ago. There was a housing shortage when my ex husband's parents were looking for a place to rent, as a young couple starting a family in the fifties. They had to live with his parents. There was a post war baby boom, causing pressure on housing in the sixties. And a lot was bombed flat during the war. Especially in Rotterdam. It was almost obliterated. In the sixties, a lot of poorer people from round the Mediterranean were recrutied to do less popular jobs. That put more pressure on the cheapest housing, as they weren't that choosy, as long as they had a roof over their heads. Caused even more competition with the young Dutchie baby boomers wanting to start families.
Well, enjoy the Netherlands until you find out you've wasted your life here. You think you can find love? 😅 Guess again! I'm from NL, with 8k per month I live like poor. Someone scratches my car in front of me, police tells me to forget about it, forget about the damage that costs 3k to repair. I'm leaving this sinking ship. But again, NL is good for those who don't like to work and live on tax payers money.
That's not really the problem with the housing crisis. It's part of the problem, but not the full problem. There are more important factors then the available space. 1) people prefer houses with gardens over apartments in flats. And houses with gardens take more space and are expensive to buy. 2) houses with gardens (the 400k kind of house) are very profitable to sell. More profitable then tiny houses or apartments in flats. And because houses are build by private companies instead of the government, the houses that are being build are the the "400k house with a garden" kind of house. Houses that are too expensive for starters, students and nearly everyone who wants a house right now. 3) investers have bought entire city's to rent those houses for insanely expensive prices to the people that also wanted to buy that house, but didn't get the chance to do so, because the investor bought that house before it came on the market. 4) the government isn't really doing anything radical to actually make the situation better.
@@ispamalot no that's not the problem. The Netherlands barely accepts any refugees, around ten to twenty thousand per year. And the labour migrants that come to our country are welcomed by the government, because there is a huge surplus of open vacancies. Those work migrants come to do the work that we are to entitled for. Are you gonna work in the greenhouses? In the factories? Are gonna clean offices? Someone needs to do that work.
@@Aranoura immigration is a big problem. here are some numbers from last year (both from newspapers and the CBS numbers): 168.000 births 169.000 deaths 402.000 immigrants, of which 100.000 from Ukraine, luckily most of those will go back to there homeland when it's safe again around 175.000 emigration 402.000 - 175.000 - 169.000 + 168.000 = 226.000 more inhabitants let's say most are 3 people families (2 parents, 1 kid) that's over 70.000 extra houses needed just to cover the influx. and then we still have the existing deficit as long as we keep getting more people like this we can't solve the current problems. we should pause (unnecessary) immigration and solve the housing shortage, skyrocketing health costs, and integration problems first. and when we've solved those problems we will be able to handle more people and give them and our current citizens a humane existence.
@@Aranoura @Aranoura fair enough yet 20000 refugees a year totallin about 50000 if we even take an average of 4 people per family is 12.5k houses which is still a considerable amount of the shortage. So they do pose a problem.
@@Aranoura lmao it was 200k in the first half of 2022 alone, are you slow in the head? Maybe check the actual number next time before you start making things up.
First they let go of the native white Dutch people for the morrocans, indonesians etc but now they just abandon everyone for illegal muslim, african etc criminals
@@mnkwazi Who's blaming anyone? Facts are facts; Our government spends billions every year on things that have nothing to do with the Netherlands itself.
Every year we accept a hundred thousand or so non educated people from poor regions like many African and Middle eastern countries and Poland. This is unsustainable.
@@xander1201 Did you know that there are also universities in other countries? I don’t even know why people would want to come here because it is cold and the people here are boring and everyone is a negative nancy.
I know that there are many other countries to study in. You don't have to be a jackass. The reason why many choose the Netherlands is that it's one of the countries where english is almost spoken by everyone at a good level. People don't care about coldness or boringness as long as they can get a degree that is recognized worldwide. They just toil their asses off to graduate and make a living.
@@xander1201 You can also study in Australia way more people there know English than in the Netherlands. We speak our own language that is called Dutch. We speak good English so that we can broaden our children’s opportunities and not to entertain foreigners, My country is not Disneyland my country was made by our ancestors for us and by the many immigrants who contributed to this land for their children. Amsterdam is not an amusement park for rich white kids from America. Amsterdam is the capital of our country. Go somewhere else and stop taking resources that could be used by Dutch teens.
I strongly disagree with the idea that these micro houses are a good thing. They are in fact a symptom of the failure of housing, where people are forced to accept living in an inhumanely small space. You still can't have a family there, you can't really reasonably have friends over. They are extremely cramped and bad for mental health. I lived in one for a while and they are a solution to the housing crisis in the same way a tent by the side of the road is. I reckon living with parents is even preferable as it is less lonely. I find the idea that micro housing is a positive thing and not a fundamental failure of housing policy to give people actual homes depressing and actually quite insulting. It says to people who are having trouble finding a home that this is how they should expect to be treated and it is frankly inhumane.
1. Bad title: especially compared to much of the western nations the Netherlands has not “failed at housing”. 2. How do you not address “Zelfbewoningsplicht” and the impact it has had in only a year? It’s clear evidence that profit-motivated actors in real estate were a major cause of rising house prices as opposed to a shortage of housing. 3. Universities have not been asked to stop accepting foreign students, they were asked to stop advertising abroad. 4. Compare your points about the Netherlands to other countries because you give a lot of statistics about land use but never address how that compares to countries that are having less housing issues which is necessary to claim that it is a factor.
The Dutch population isn't growing, the number of foreign settlers is growing with about 300k every year. So demand isn't adressed, it's out of control. Stop allowing people in for one year and the shortage would be solved. Government didn't ask universities to stop taking foreign students, they asked them to stop actively acquistioning them. It's out of control too because refuses to take control of it's universities and for example use those to educate the Dutch well and not ruining student culture, the Dutch language and general education levels. The farmland is not the government's property, and the idea that you can just allocate that land to yoga studio's, housing of expat ICT workers or refugees on welfare is in denial of the fact in an economy the secondary, tertiary and quarternary sector sit upon the primary sector. Housing is also private, even social housing is property of private non profit associations. But goverment has appropriated those to house 'refugees', not from the wars in Germany, Belgium or even Ukraine, but people who crossed several safe countries to get such a house, by letting the surpass the waiting lists of between 8 and 23 years. It's not that agriculture shouldn't change, but the Dutch government is taking land, housing and education from the Dutch to give it to foreigners, abusing the welcoming and tolerant nature of the Dutch and demanding them to work harder to accomodate them. If you are a teacher, your job becomes much harder with every child who is not a native speaker. So the problem is much more fundamental. Dutch government is breaking the social contract, the foundation beneath democracy, the Dutch declared in 1581 that government should serve it's people and fought an 80-year war for that. Now this government is serving people from all around the world and serving many corporata interests, but not the Dutch.
The waiting list for my town and many many others is allready 10 years, and my town is not even in the Randstad, also you cannot buy anything in this city under 300k unless you get realy lucky somehow or buy a sh*thole (that still is gonna cost you minimum 250k) for which you have to do ten years of reapairing and upgrading it.(for which you need permits and they cost you money too.
I'm leaving the Netherlands for good, never to return, never. The more I earn here, the poorer I become. With 8k per month, i live like poor in the Netherlands. 8k is a lot of money anywhere in the world, but in NL, they have engineered the system to keep you poor.
*I mean most major cities around the world are facing housing shortages, unfortunately. All the young people & immigrants obviously want to live in the big cities where there's things to actually do & live that IG/influencer life*
This video did not address the fact that the housing crisis is mainly caused by the government incentivising and courting housing investors. It also did not address that the areas that see a reduction in population have been left behind by the government for many years and have been stripped of their infrastructure. Building houses won't solve a single thing if the system that incentivises housing as an investment isn't destroyed.
@ispamalot it's like the deliberately wanna destroy this country and Europe in general. And these politicians are supposed to be the smart ones. We need a new revolution.
Isn’t this a problem in just about every single developed western country regardless of the size? Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, etc., are all going through a massive housing crisis due to high demand and low supply. In Canada, they have condos and cranes just about everywhere. Even small towns are getting skylines. They still can’t match the pace of demand and hence housing prices and rents have become ridiculously high…eye watering high…add in Canada’s education sector and international students from all over the world, about 700,000 a year last time I checked…on top of 500,000 permanent residents a year, on top of thousands more on work permits and stuff…we have a perfect recipe for housing disaster…demand is just so high
the video is really good. I live in The Hague and it is true that there are not much availability for housing. The thing is that people want big houses and big appartements when they really need much less and because of that there is not much choice. Most houses are old 3 or 4 floored buildings which do not provide enough space compared to a skyscraper.
I to use to live in the Hague now on the streets: BA studied, playing guitar As an American, last I checked out was a studio 28m2 28 square meters== €1600 excluding GWL two groups of 70 were there to check it out, meanwhile belastingdienst government tax dept. Has a building across from HS fit for 100 people Empty since 2006.
@@fredjansen2659 tell me one which is not ? I've searched from South th Brabant and since I'm not allowed to live in the office space 200.000 2m empty it's kind hard. :) You got a spare shed haha :)
...And yet the Netherlands is number five here: Top 10 happiest countries: 1 Finland, 2 Denmark, 3 Switzerland, 4 Iceland, 5 the Netherlands, 6 Norway, 7 Sweden, 8 Luxembourg, 9 New Zealand, 10 Austria. Note that all but #9 are in Europe and that the five Nordic countries are listed. 💕☮🌎🌌
To try to explain Dutch housing problems without surplus immigration (+200k in 2022), you're missing the root cause of the shortage. The Dutch population is not growing by 316 people each day: we're importing 316 people each day. Not matter what you do, unless you build enough houses each day to accommodate 316 new people, you're going to run out of houses eventually and prices will sky rocket due to supply & demand. All the rest, the farmers, the environment, foreign investors buying up real estate, are minor issues that aggravate a situation that wouldn't be there if there wasn't a net population growth adding more people to limited space.
As a first year international student at the University of Amsterdam I need to say that I am really happy a video like this has been made to bring this issue more to light. I was looking for a room, an apartment, a studio or anything for 4 months before finding something in the end and to be able to attend viewings which were almost always a requirement I spent a month in the city, essentially being homeless, changing places where I stayed from a hotel to another hotel to a friend's place, to a hostel, to another friend's place and once again to another friend's place avidly searching for basically anything, no matter the price or the location. I ended up finding something but many of my friends were not so lucky and some dropped out before starting university, or after a couple of months after not being able to find a place to stay, living at their friends' or in hostels. Many fellow students also live in places that are for the dutch standards very far away from Amsterdam like Leiden, Rotterdam, Hague or Utrecht. The crisis is worse than almost anyone outside of the Netherlands thinks and needs a fast solution. Many students coming here, including me, think that it is just hard to find a room within a certain price range and you can just power your way through by paying 1200 or 1500 euros a month for a room but this is not the case and honestly there simply just aren't enough houses or apartments to house everyone. Moreover the problem is barely if at all caused by the lack of space in the country and it's more of a political issue which seems to be starting to get enough attention with concrete plans being made but until it is fully solved, probably min. 10 years, it is a living hell when it comes to the housing crisis and from the bottom of my heart to everyone living here or planning to move here, for example as a student, I wish you all the luck with finding housing and may this problem be solved as soon as possible.
I mean, you moved to Amsterdam, the most desired and rich place in the whole Netherlands. Everyone wants to live in a tiny spot in the middle of it too. Of course it is hard to find housing, as it is a choice to go there and fight that battle. (The same as in any megacity). The problem is that everyone wants to go to bigger cities in Ranstad. But somehow 20 mins away by car usually there is a lot more available and cheaper housing.
as an international student in the Netherlands, I can confirm, this shit is ridiculous. I started studying in September 2022 and I was able to find a place and move in yesterday (It's February 2023) now I consider myself lucky to pay 655 euros a month for a 10-square-meter room.
After 19 seconds the first fail... The netherlands always had compact cities...the american suburbs are a bad economic design. If you watch strong town video’s and read the report you should have known that
You cant really build density if you keep building 3 storey buildings instead of atleast 10 floors. a simple order requiring all new housing to be atleast 7 floor with a comercial area bellow would probably solve the problem
Most new development is actually going up though, my neighborhood was constructed in 2018 and it's all apartment buildings between 7 and 10 floors high.
The surface per capita has more than doubled in a few decades... Might also be part of the problem. Using more land for housing/builing higher is just running a red queen's race with no end in sight, just more and more problems coming up as space/ressources will grow scarcer.
What a total nightmare. Imagine having to live in a coffin like the micro houses, just because normal housing isn't an option. Young people and starters on the housing market are screwed and many of them consider not having kids because there's no place for them to grow up. Unless you consifer a 1 room micro house enough space for a family of four. What a dystopia...
i think another great factor to our housing problem, which many international youtube channels and press dont want to talk about, is the mass immigration from north african, middle eastern but also other european countries into the Netherlands. it is very easy to request asylum here and get priority free housing while dutch people themselves have to wait up to 10 years on a list to get a rental home. The war in Ukraine applies to this aswell.
As an Australian, I can sympathize with the Dutch. Here, rents have nationally increased over 24% in the past 12 months and no major political party can seem to offer a solution. Commentators parrot it as a simple supply and demand issue but as in other countries the housing crisis is far more complicated. Our tax systems need to be overhauled that currently subsidize landlords over owner-occupiers, and we need greater tenant rights. Honestly, compared to Europe, Australia is nearly a century behind in terms of our tenancy laws and the ability our landlords have to simply increase rent to whatever they like. I think for Australia and a lot of other countries including the Netherlands the basic need of housing is fast becoming our greatest source of financial hardship and diminishing life chances. If the Dutch have failed at housing, Australia's current situation is a catastrophe.
A huge reason why the netherlands took land away from farmers is for housing. It could easily expand their city’s borders and continue to develop in a dense sustainable way. I think they could even double their population if the will was there
Double our population? No thanks. This country is full. What we need to do is stop allowing immigrants for 10 years and then see how we're doing. If we don't change, this country is going to be unrecognizable in 30 - 50 years.
@@sloeberdoetyou must be talking about an American city. Every Dutch city I’ve ever been to incorporates a huge amount of parks and open space within the city. Including open space in urban environments is something Dutch cities are really good at.
this problem is because of africa i live in the netherlands there are just way to many people from africa that come to the netherlands and the goverment does not do anything about it
Oh. Some of you should totally move to Sweden. We have a skilled worker shortage and cheaper housing (yes we currently have a bubble but it's comming down right now) try other cities than Stockholm/Gothenburg though, also super hard to find housing. I've actually met some dutch who emigrated here and they love the nature etc.
If you go for an engineering job at a company you can probably even start without knowing swedish, english is enough (and apparently dutch is similar to swedish, I'm told you pick it up easily.?)
At 3:34, you forgot to mark a big part of Flevoland. The forgotten piece of land to the north of the marked area was actually the first new piece of land of current Flevoland, and connected the Island 'Urk' to the mainland.
Besides housing what also sucks is that if you have own busines real estate agents demand to see what the income was of said business over the last 2-3 years, which turns out to be a problem if you've just started out. Imagine you happen to lose a roof over your head when you just started your business
it is because of the huge amount of refuguees coming in, second problem is we're facing a enviorment crisis because of rules we agreed with the european union, we tricked our selfs.
Because Belgium is not as incompetent as the Netherlands in the last decade. The Dutch are actually failing on so many levels, but because we still riding a wave of the decades before that was far more successful for many people in those times, today most young people cannot afford a house not able to get a mortgage for one. This is aside the fact that there are not enough houses for people to find. Hence the crazy rental prices. And this is just some of the many issues. We have a fairly good income on average, but plenty people don't have that and cost of living in the Netherlands is actually high. And I don't think this is not going to be solved anytime soon And yeah. Let's not fool ourselves how much we protect our nature in the Netherlands. The core of it all is still that we have the lowest forest cover in all of Europe with the only competition from UK both around 10-11% forest cover. Vastly below Europe's average. Oh yeah! but we have a park here and there!! Whoohoo. Yeah. Have you have been in a park where 100.000 other people are having the same idea to have a stroll? Nature in the Netherlands is a reasonable joke.
not all nature is forest. we also have peat lands (turf), bird reservations, sand drifts (zandverstuivings gebieden), heath-lands (heide) and more. and we have a lot of nature areas, not just parks. but maybe you're from the Randstad and don't know how the other 9 provinces of The Netherlands look. The Netherlands is so much more than just Amsterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht
I live in Drenthe and I've always lived in Utrecht untill we moved. Since we moved to Drenthe the house price here has gone up by 11% ... More and more people come here because they can't afford the cities anymore. This is also true for Groningen. People are looking for different places to live because it's unaffordable in the cities. I still live at home because to rent in Drenthe the waiting list is +2 years...
I moved to Canada in the early 80's as a child with my family. Housing was a huge issue even back then, and it's still a problem now. Although the Dutch in general are great at solving technological, agricultural, or water management issues, and indeed, are world leaders in some of these issues, resolving housing problems seems to have eluded them in the last 50 years. It's actually scandalous that this is still a huge problem even after so many years!
No, the real issue is a shortage of land in Holland, and their policies affecting those parts of the country where land is not yet at a premium. And before you say anything, I am not some northern nationalist(although they are out there), but anyone who lives here knows that housing can be, and still is, quite affordable in even the larger urban centers. A quick scroll through ‘Funda’ will tell you all you need to know, with 50m2 appartments going for nearly €700.000 in Amsterdam, but not even €200.000 in Leeuwarden, despite both being in a central city with good public transport, plenty of job opportunties, and all the public services one needs. The fact is of course that €200.000 is still a lot of money for such a flat, but it’s a lot more achievable for starters than the million euro family homes of the Randstad. But you know, here it comes, because who wants to live in the north? Who wants to live in an appartment with their spouse? My god, imagine having to drive to get your groceries or having to sit in a train for a whole hour(!) to visit family, what a travesty. Three fourths of this country’s young men and women end up wanting to live in the big cities in the Randstad, and I don’t blame them, but in their focus on modernity, vibrancy and cosmopolitan living they fail to see that other parts of this country can give them, their partners, and their children, so much more. To fix the housing issue The Hague has to encourage people moving to other parts of the country. I am convinced of that solution. They have to solve an image problem they themselves created by for decades centralizing everything in the west. But trust me, ladies and gentlemen, everything you find in the Randstad, you’ll find in the provinces. There’s work here, and hospitals, and stocked grocery stores with all the products one can imagine. There’s room to breath, to move, and to go; places you can visit without seeing another person or go to see the Milky Way at night. It’s not so bad here, guys, and affordable too.
The reason for the housing shortage are immigration from other countries, (without immigrants the population would decrease) rules regarding construction of homes, shortage of workers, interest rates, inflation etc.
Exactly. Immigration is and will always be the main reason for this crisis. It's baffling to see how many people in these comments are afraid to talk about this.
Immigration is the issue, we need to close our borders. 45.000 seeking asylum in our country, after they have it granted, the law states that they can bring their family, so make that approx 80.000 people a year. That are 20.000 houses for small income people every year. These people from outside rarely intend to make a career in the Netherlands and stay in those houses for ever, This makes it impossible for people from the Netherlands to get social housing and start saving money for a mortgage. By the time those 60.000 houses are done that the government wants to build, there is already a shortage of 120.000 homes.
The government for decades has restricted construction and continues to do so. There is huge potential for economic growth if the government changes its policies.
I have lived in the Netherlands for the past 5 years. I have simply never seen this massive amount of construction in any country I have been in... They are building every thing every where... Roads, Houses, schools, Business units, Office blocks etc etc etc.... literally 10 construction sites building new homes with in 10 mins from me and they are all massive ones where they are building thousands of homes.
@@hylje There is 60,000 to 100,000 empty properties in the Netherlands. People that are complaining are the ones that have no intention of getting off their bums and working hard to buy a home... even the worst home in the worst location. ( I literally bought the cheapest house in my city just so I had no mortgage... No debt for the banks to profit off of) I worked very hard to get to that position and it has been extremely hard mentally to move to another country, but I have done it. Many people cant or wont settle for what and where they could buy. Or work harder to make more money so that they can get just some thing... un realistic expectations....
