The housing corporations in the Eindhoven Metropolitan Region are furious about the cabinet’s announced rent freeze. According to them, this measure means there will soon be less money to build affordable housing.
Due to this measure in the Spring Memorandum, the housing corporations will soon have less money and thus less affordable housing can be built. “The cabinet is actually extracting 47 billion euros from the investment power of housing corporations in the country. Thirty percent social renting is now completely out of reach.”
There is a huge shortage of affordable housing in and around Eindhoven. That is why the municipality of Eindhoven wants to realize at least thirty percent social housing in new construction plans. That will no longer be possible, say the corporations.
Noose
The rent freeze that the cabinet wants to implement will be welcomed by many tenants of social housing. The rent would be increased by 4.5 percent. Besides skyrocketing supermarket prices, high energy bills, and expensive health insurance, it would mean another noose for many people who are already tight on money.
Luc Severijnen, director of housing association Thuis and spokesman for a platform for housing associations in the Metropolitan Region, is furious about the cabinet’s intention. “We have a gigantic housing task nationwide but certainly also in this region. We also have to make a sustainability effort. That was already an enormous task, and more money was actually needed for that. Now it’s going to be completely impossible.”
Dark
The rent freeze is a gift with a very dark downside, the director says. “The cabinet is extracting 47 billion euros from the investment power of housing associations in the country. That while we had already reduced the rent increase from 6 to 4.5 percent. Our tenants’ council also agreed to that.”
Smaller percentage
“Moreover, the Nibud has calculated that in recent years people have already started to spend a smaller percentage of their income on rent in percentage terms,” Severijnen said. “As a housing corporation, we made a budget and we made performance agreements with the municipalities, also in the context of Beethoven. In addition, five months ago we sat down with Housing Minister Keijzer and also made agreements with her.”
Resign
So those agreements have been unilaterally thrown in the trash, says Severijnen. “The minister is shown to be unreliable. It makes no sense to make agreements with her. As a housing corporation, we no longer see the point of sitting down at the table with this minister. The only thing she can do after this decision is to resign, which is the general mood among housing associations.”
Severijnen does not want to argue that people in the social rental sector do not need a tax cut. “I also see that life is very expensive for a lot of people. But the pain is more in other expenses that are too high, think of groceries and energy, that also emerges from the Nibud figures.”
Own coffers lined
Moreover, the cabinet is also lining its coffers, Severijnen explains. “If they had wanted to lower the cost of rent they could also have increased the rent allowance, then the housing corporations would not have been affected. But now the cabinet itself has to spend less money on rent subsidies. It is pretended that the cabinet is helping tenants, but actually, tenants are being put into long-term misery. It is completely impossible to build enough housing because of this measure.”
Source: Studio040
For Eindhoven News: Chaitali Sengupta.
