When I moved to Amsterdam, I felt incredibly lucky to find an illegal six-month sublet 15 minutes by bike from the centre, secured through a friend of a friend. The cost was €1,000 a month – a bargain by market standards but still well over double what my downstairs neighbour, Henrika, paid under the lifelong social housing contract she had obtained four decades earlier.
In the intervening years, Amsterdam had shifted from a pinnacle of inclusivity and progressive housing politics to one of Europe’s most unaffordable markets. In the last year, Dutch house prices have surged bymore than 10%, homelessnesshas risen by more than 20%, and rents in the private rental sector haveclimbed by more than 7%.
Divides in Amsterdam’s rental system have never been starker. Outsiders – primarily young people, newcomers and lower earners – are increasingly forced into an overpriced, insecure rental market to access the city. Meanwhile, insiders – typically older residents who secured affordable homes under better conditions – are assured stability and a place to grow old. But they are not the villains in this story, just a reminder of how quickly housing politics have changed. So, how did this two-tier system come to be?
Over the past 40 years, the general direction of Amsterdam’s housing policies has shifted, from prioritising social to private housing. There has been an underinvestment in affordable housing for lower-income groups and a deliberate shift towards market-based housing geared toward the affluent. The bigger political and ideological agenda behind this shift was to gradually transform the capital from a relatively poor workers’ city to a richer city for the middle classes.
Encouraging home ownership was one strategy to invite richer residents. And historically low interest rates, easy access to credit and mortgage interest tax deductions offering clear incentives to buy meant home ownership used to be an achievable goal for many Dutch people. However, with the average property prices in Amsterdam rising beyond what even educated professionals could afford, efforts to attract and accommodate the middle classes have shifted from home ownership towards a transformation of the rental sector.
Around 70% of the city’s population rents, but the social housing sector, where rents arecapped at €900 a month, has steadily shrunk. Social housing accounted for nearly 60% of the city’s rental housing in the late 1980s, with most new construction intended for this segment. However, decades of sell-offs, demolitions and limits in new construction have reduced social housing supply by a third since this point. Now, many local governments arestruggling to meet the 30% social housing targetin new housing projects, where the majority of new builds are aimed at higher-income residents.
Previously, social housing in theNetherlandswas available to both low- and middle-income households, driven by social-democratic values of inclusivity and social cohesion. Access has been gradually restricted to lower earners, and even those who qualify face long waiting lists – over a decade in high-demand areas such as Amsterdam. This starkly contrasts with the past. Young Amsterdammers could register for social housing at 18 and expect to secure a permanent home within a few years – a luxury that seems unimaginable to today’s newcomers looking for affordable housing in the city.
With both social housing and home ownership out of reach, the Dutch government turned to the market to address shortages. The private rental sector hasmore than tripled in sizein Amsterdam in the last two decades. A key strategy of expansion was loosening regulation: short-term leases replaced lifelong rental contracts, and price ceilings were removed on a growing share of properties. With the sector becoming more attractive to investors, everything from small-scale landlords, real-estate investment trusts and big companies such as Blackstone began to look to Amsterdam’s private rental market as a place to park their cash. Now, a quarter of properties in major Dutch cities are owned by investors. Between 2007 and 2020, an estimated €23bn in rental real-estate transactions by institutional investors took place in Amsterdam. This makes it one of Europe’s hottest institutional investment markets, falling only just short of London.
With growing concerns over theever-worsening housing crisis, there have been recent attempts to calm the rental sector and curb investor purchases. Measures such as limiting short-term rental contracts andrestricting rentals in homes under a certain valuehave had some success in prompting some investors to sell up. While this may free up properties for lower-income residents and first-time buyers, it is yet to be seen how far these will go in addressing house prices and continually rising rental costs.
Single rooms in shared housesfrequently fetch €1,000 a month, and spending half of an income on rent is not unusual any more. It is unsurprising that stories of young people being unable to move out of the parental home, sharing well into their 30s, orpostponing graduation to keep their student housinghave become commonplace. For thoseunable to find an affordable home, housing policy isn’t just about economics – it shapes their entire lives. It stalls independence, strips away stability, and puts futures on hold.
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There are also political implications of the housing crisis. Rightwing parties have mobilised the mass dissatisfaction with housing to push racist and anti-migration sentiments. This was seen clearly during therunup to the November 2023 election, which resulted in the first far-right win in recent history.Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-Islam Freedom party, blamed labour migrants, asylum seekers and foreign students for monopolising housing supply and driving up prices.
During my six-month sublet, I spent many nights listening to Henrika’s tales of Amsterdam in the past. Her stories left me wondering how people could continue to build a life in the city without wealth or privilege, the way she had done. They left me questioning the city’s future, and whether it would remain a place of creativity, openness and diversity if it continued to transition to a playground for the rich. Mostly, they left me doubting whether the recent wave of housing regulations would be enough to undo a housing crisis decades in the making, or if they’ve come too little, too late.
Amber Howard is a researcher in social policy at the University of Bristol. Her work examines housing inequality in high-income countries, with a focus on the Netherlands