Where Minister of Housing Hugo de Jonge presents plenty of plans about regulating the middle rent and mandatory social housing, he is not appreciated. Professor Arnoud Boot also sees this.
Boot even argues that the housing market as we know it is not even a market. ‘There is hardly any major government involvement in the housing market anywhere,’ says Boot. ‘This means that there has also been a change in policy over time, because the Ministry of Housing was disbanded not so long ago. After all, the Netherlands was ‘finished’.
According to Boot, the housing market in the Netherlands is ‘by definition’ very complicated. That is due to the stability of the market. ‘If you have the wrong houses, it actually takes a generation to get the right ones,’ he says. ‘And you can’t build very fast in a country that is so dense. So it is extremely positive that public housing is back at the top of the list and that there is a minister for it, but at the same time there is a danger.’
From one to the other
Danger that lies in the inconsistency of the policy. According to Boot, this is a dossier to which different policies were applied each time, from more market to more government. ‘So the question is what the role of the government should be. (…). Of course there has been constant action and not a year will go by without that happening.’
He names the social housing sector, which contains 2.5 million houses, which is actually one third of the entire stock. According to Boot, this indicates that government policy matters, ‘because the moment social housing – which is also mainly found in large cities in the big cities – is extremely attractive, and is appropriate by keeping rents low, then you see that people never want to go out.’
Hugo Young
And in fact, Hugo de Jonge cannot change the rental market, is his view. The market has been around for a long time, and according to Boot is not social. “When you’re in, you never want to get out, and you’re on the waiting list for ten years if you need it.”
‘Hugo de Jonge cannot change the rental market’
He calls it a ‘very good warning’ against excessive policy ambitions. According to Boot, policy should be viewed in the longer term. ‘In the one and a half to two years that De Jonge still has as minister, he cannot show any results,’ says Boot. ‘That is impossible. The housing market cannot change that quickly.’
Spatial planning is a government task
Boot agrees with De Jonge in his point of view that spatial planning is a task of the government, in which he says it is crucial that the government manifests itself. ‘The fact that municipalities may have interests other than those of the region, province or country means that the central government has a right to manifest itself.’
