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The neo-liberal politics and socio-spatial implications of Dutch post-crisis social housing policies

This review discusses changes in Dutch housing policy that were implemented after the great financial crisis of 2008, notably the 2015 Housing Act and its lead-up legislation, and a landlord levy aimed at taxing housing associations. We argue that these changes should be seen as a decade-long process of institutional re-regulation that may be characterised as neo-liberalisation. In addition to reviewing the neo-liberal politics of these changes, we also provide an assessment of the social and spatial implications of the new legislation. Financial pressures on housing associations and higher income tenants together with the stricter eligibility for new tenants have led to a relative decline and residualisation of the social-rental sector. Also, housing policies are set to increase the spatial concentration of disadvantaged population groups. These socio-spatial implications may further undermine social housing in the future.

Changes in stock and residualisation

New housing regulations instituted after the crisis restricted access to social housing while also putting financial pressure on housing associations and their tenants. The continued demise and residualisation of social housing is evident in the declining share of stock. Whereas housing associations owned about 40% of the housing stock in 1990, this had declined to 30.7% in 2012 and 29.3% in 2018. Between 2007 and 2017, there was a net loss of 23,500 housing association dwellings, while the total housing stock grew by over 600,000 dwellings, as well as households (Figure 1). Housing association dwellings with a monthly rent below the liberalisation threshold1 even show a 5% decline between 2007 and 2017, with a noticeable drop when the Housing Act came into effect in 2015. Only those dwellings with a rent below this threshold are rent regulated, and therefore social, based on a point scoring system measuring dwelling quality—while dwellings with higher rents are officially rent liberalised. The result of these developments is an increasing gap between the total size of the social-rental stock and the total number of households.

Source: Tandfonline

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