Dutch provinces agree to build 917,000 new homes; Cabinet to allocate €11 billion

The twelve provinces of the Netherlands made agreements with the Cabinet to develop and construct over 917,000 new housing units by the end of 2030, Housing Minister Hugo de Jonge said on Thursday. Over a quarter of them will be built in Zuid-Holland. Roughly 600,000 of the new homes built will be considered affordable.

“This will be achieved through the construction of 350,000 rental and owner-occupied homes in the middle segment (40%) and 250,000 social rental homes,” the ministry said in a statement. “This also contributes to the aim of achieving a 30% share of social rent in the housing stock per municipality.”

Previously, De Jonge defined mid-market rental as having a maximum of about a thousand euros, with affordable home prices set at 355,000 euros. Since then, it was announced that the National Mortgage Guarantee limit would rise to 405,000 euros, which also pushed up De Jonge’s definition of “affordable” by 50,000 euros.

In the separate provincial agreements, Zuid-Holland ended at the top of the list, committing to nearly 235,500 new homes. Three other provinces plan to build at least a hundred thousand homes, including Noord-Holland (183,600), Noord-Brabant (130,600), and Gelderland (100,000). Drenthe wond up with the lowest total, 13,600. There were two other provinces committing to fewer than twenty thousand units, Zeeland (16,500) and Friesland (17,500).

The next step is for the provinces to work with developers and housing associations to determine where the homes will be built, the percentage of affordable housing, and which groups will be targeted as residents. The parties involved will then begin to tackle the administrative and financial hurdles to move their regional projects forward.

However, handling the plans at a regional and sub-regional level could be more difficult than De Jonge let on. The interest group representing the housing associations, Aedes, said that many housing organizations find regional planning and implementation to be somewhat chaotic. It remains to be seen if the construction of social housing, for example, “can really get underway in the foreseeable future,” Aedes Chair Martin van Rijn told ANP.

De Jonge acknowledged it will be an “enormous task” to build an average of about 115,000 homes each of the next eight years. “This will require a joint effort – shoulder to shoulder – from governments, corporations and market parties. As a result of these agreements, we will build more affordable homes with greater control, because the housing shortage is enormous,” he said in a statement.

The Cabinet is planning on spending nearly 11 billion euros to ensure that the projects get off the ground and are quickly completed. Some 6 billion euros will be invested in infrastructure in 17 specific areas where larger housing districts are planned. Another 1.5 billion euros will be used to accelerate the housing projects, and 1.25 billion euros will keep them running smoothly, the ministry said.

Housing associations are also expected to contribute 1.7 billion euros annually to the plan. In total, they will invest over 60 billion euros in new construction to work towards the Cabinet’s ambitious goal.