Housing targets have been missed in recent years. Councillor Mieke Verhees (Housing) explains how the council intends to turn the tide in the coming period. “I would not bet my life that we will succeed. It is not easy, but we keep trying. After all, the task remains”.
The municipality of Eindhoven wants to continue the ‘Eindhoven Bouwt Door’ (Eindhoven builds on) programme to speed up its housing task. With this programme, Eindhoven has been working since 2023 to get stagnating building projects back on track. The municipality now wants to extend the programme until 2027. The cost will be similar to the initial investment: around €18.5 million.
Some 7,540 houses have already been built thanks to the programme, which, according to housing councillor Mieke Verhees, is all about customisation and financial support. Nevertheless, the alderperson is failing to keep her own promises from the coalition agreement. Over the past three years, the target of 3,000 new homes a year has been missed time and again. The agreement with central government to build 23,621 homes is also under pressure. Verhees: “I don’t dare bet my life on it that we will succeed. It’s not easy, but we’ll keep at it. After all, the task remains”.
Most needed
To speed up construction projects, existing requirements will be eliminated wherever possible. The requirement for 85 per cent affordable housing in development projects remains. This means that 30 per cent must be social rental housing. The average rent will be 1,200 euros per month.
“The priority for new housing is not for people who are going to work at ASML. They will come, they can go anywhere. We are particularly concerned about the people who need housing the most”. In addition, the municipality wants to create as few new jobs as possible to avoid delaying current and new projects.
The focus is on speeding up projects that are already in the pipeline. “Experience shows that 60 per cent of the construction projects in the pipeline are completed on time. So we need to keep filling the pipeline with new projects”, says Verhees. One way of speeding up these projects is to launch a number of preliminary procedures at the same time. A pilot project has already started.
Flow-through
The Housing Council also wants to make better use of existing buildings to create additional living space, for example by encouraging house splitting and flow-through. In this way, the city council hopes to quickly provide more residents with housing. A few months ago, the Woonbedrijf launched the DeelWonen project with the same aim. To ease the situation, Verhees also wants to focus on smaller homes for the elderly, so that elderly people who currently live in a house that is ‘too big’ can live in an apartment that also has care facilities. The houses that become free will then be available again for families.
Source: Studio040.nl
Translated by: Anitha Sevugan
