Cities need to tackle housing market discrimination: D66

Ruling party D66 wants to give municipalities more powers to tackle discrimination in the housing market. The party wants to make it legally possible to revoke brokers' and landlords' licenses if discrimination is proven through mystery calls, RTL Nieuws reports.

A mystery-call study by the Ministry of Home Affairs showed that many brokers are willing to discriminate at landlords' request. Researchers posing as landlords asked brokers to only rent out their accommodation to tenants of Dutch descent, for example. And many landlords agreed to that request.

Currently, it is legally challenging to use mystery calls as proof in criminal proceedings. The problem is that there is no actual victim in a mystery call - they're fictitious cases intended to test landlords and brokers.

To change that, D66 parliamentarian Faissal Boulakjar is working on a legislative proposal to legally regulate that mystery calls can be used to punish real estate brokers and landlords. The Good Landlordship Act will give municipalities the option to require that brokers and landlords in certain parts of the city must have a permit. If they are caught discriminating and do not improve after a first warning, the permit can be revoked.

"The persistent poison of discrimination stands in the way of equal opportunities in the housing market," Boulakjar said to RTL. "Many Dutch people of color or with a difficult name encounter racism every day."