Government policy, not immigrants, the cause of Dutch housing shortage: UN Rapporteur

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, has urged Dutch politicians to stop inciting hatred of foreigners by blaming immigrants for the housing shortage in the Netherlands. Decades of Dutch government policy is to blame for the “acute housing crisis,” not asylum seekers and migrant workers, he said in a 19-page long report following a visit to the Netherlands in December and several months of research.

“An alternative narrative has emerged in the Netherlands that an ‘influx of foreigners’ arriving in the country is responsible for the housing crisis, which has been exploited for political ends and has radicalized and divided public opinion,” Rajagopal said in his report. “It is important to break down who are the foreigners that arrive in the Netherlands and to understand how they are housed.”

He pointed out that over half of all immigrants coming to the Netherlands are from EU countries. Only 11 percent are asylum seekers. According to him, migrant workers, asylum seekers, and undocumented migrants don’t pose competition to the Dutch when it comes to access to adequate housing. “These groups mostly find themselves at the bottom of society competing for housing which most Dutch citizens are either not eligible for or would not wish to move into,” Rajagopal said.

“A certain number of highly qualified expatriates employed in specific industries or international organizations may pose some competition, which can, in specific areas, drive up housing prices, but this is not, by all available evidence, the cause of the general housing crisis in the Netherlands.”

Rajagopal added that Dutch politicians mustn’t forget that “many asylum seekers arrive from countries such as Syria where there have been military interventions supported by the Netherlands and other NATO countries, contributing to the flight of asylum seekers.”

The UN rapporteur also noted that the Netherlands’ housing of asylum seekers is inadequate and that the country could make better use of highly skilled asylum seekers in its tight labor market.

The Netherlands' current “acute housing crisis,” which manifests itself in both availability and affordability, has been “over two or more decades” in the making, Rajagopal said. “It has many structural causes, including lack of adequate land for new affordable housing, lack of regulation of the social housing providers, introduction of income limits for eligibility, lack of rent caps or their enforcement in the private rental sector, insufficient attention to the role of speculation and large investors in the real estate market, and insufficient protection of renters’ rights including through eviction prevention.”

He made 65 recommendations for improving the situation in the Dutch housing market, including enshrining the right to adequate housing in the Constitution, reestablishing a Ministry of Housing, allowing local governments to impose rent caps, and fining landlords for leaving rental properties empty for profit.

Paul Bekkers, the Netherlands’ permanent representative to the UN, said the Dutch government would take the recommendations to heart. Though he criticized suggestions to enshrine the right to housing in the constitution, calling it very drastic, NOS reports. He also said that the Netherlands has a Minister for Housing, and setting up a new Ministry takes a lot of time and is up to the next Cabinet. And he said that Rajagopal's criticism of asylum shelters was too general and drawn too quickly.