The trade association for housing corporations Aedes is outraged by a threatening cutback by the cabinet on rent allowance. Aedes states that the cabinet wants to gradually take away the rent allowance for some of the tenants of social housing. Aedes chairman Martin van Rijn says it is ‘painful’ that money is being taken away from people with the lowest incomes as they struggle with high inflation.
Before 2025, the cabinet would look at gradually reversing an increase in the rent allowance of 17 euros per month, according to the spring memorandum. That increase was introduced early this year to help low-income people cope with high inflation and rising living costs.
But the cabinet would like to make cutbacks here, among other things to finance the Affordable Rent Act. ‘It is ironic and painful to take the money needed to cover the implementation of the Affordable Rent Act away from people with the lowest incomes. This is unexplainable, especially in this day and age. Moreover, there is not yet any substantiation of these implementation costs. We hope that politicians will see that this unreasonable plan must be reversed,” Van Rijn said in a statement.
Outraged
The Housing Association is also outraged. ‘We find it unacceptable that the cabinet wants to partly and possibly completely reverse our agreed fair measure. After all, the net rent is going up again. For the lowest incomes, who can hardly make ends meet, a few euros is also a lot of money. If you do this step by step every year, you actually send an increasing part of your own population to the food banks,’ says director Zeno Winkels of the interest group for tenants.
