Tenants in newer rentals have worst living environment in Amsterdam: study

Tenants, especially people living in newer rentals, have a worse living environment than homeowners in the Amsterdam region. A large study in the Amsterdam metropolitan region came to this conclusion when researching whether living in a rented or purchased home affects people’s health and environmental quality, Parool reports.

The study was a collaboration between the University of Amsterdam, GGD Amsterdam, the municipality, the Amsterdam Federation of Housing Corporations, and the Healthy City Foundation. The Inequality Knowledge Center funded the study.

The researchers looked at exposure to air pollution, noise pollution, green areas, and heat stress when assessing the health of the living environment. They found that tenants generally scored worse than homeowners regarding environmental quality and that private sector tenants also scored worse than people renting social housing.

Especially residents of private rentals built after 2010 are exposed to more nitrogen dioxide and ambient noise than in the same type of homes built ten years earlier. According to the researchers, this is primarily due to the construction locations. In the crowded Amsterdam region, newer homes were built near Schiphol and in existing urban areas along the railway or A10 highway in the past decade.

According to Fred Woudenberg, head of the living environment department at the GGD, the study shows that the government must think carefully about the housing requirements and consider the location. He isn’t against densification. “But significant steps still need to be taken, especially regarding noise pollution, and this must be distributed fairly,” he told Parool.

As an example, University of Amsterdam principal researcher Wouter van Gent pointed to new construction at the Funenpark. “There is a ring of rental homes along the track, which serve as a sound barrier for the owner-occupied homes that have been built behind them. You may wonder whether that is desirable,” he said. The researchers recommend ensuring that the distribution between owner-occupied and rental homes is geographically mixed when planning new construction.

The study also confirmed a link between people’s housing market position and their health. The researchers found that social housing tenants use more medicines for lung disease, cardiovascular disease, and sleep problems than homeowners. However, this difference seems to mainly arise from socio-economic factors. Determining whether the living environment also plays a significant role in this requires further research, the researchers said.