Freezing social rents for 500,000 private landlord tenants "practically impossible"

It is “practically impossible” to freeze the rents of the around 500,000 social housing tenants who rent from private landlords, people involved told NOS. Compensating the landlords involved will be very complicated and the government doesn’t have the money to do so, the broadcaster’s sources said.

Freezing social rents was one of PVV leader Geert Wilders’ most fervent demands in the massive 25-hour negotiation session for the spring budget update. The government and coalition agreed that social housing rents will not increase in the coming two years. Housing corporations will receive over 1 billion euros in compensation for this. Housing corporations own around 2 million social housing units.

But the negotiators seemingly forgot about the around 500,000 other social housing tenants renting from private landlords. No compensation was agreed for these landlords, and Housing Minister Mona Keijzer set aside no money for this. She could take some of the money from the housing corporations’ compensation, but they are already threatening to go to court because they find the amount too low. The housing corporations warn that they’ll be able to build far fewer homes due to the rent freeze.

And even if the Minister finds money to compensate the private landlords, doing so will be “practically impossible,” NOS’s sources said. Each landlord would have to be compensated individually, and there is no overview or central register of who these landlords are. The operation of finding them, figuring out how much to compensate them, and paying out the money will likely cost many times more than the compensation itself, the sources said.

Vastgoed Belang, the organization that represents private landlords, informed Keijzer that they would rather increase rents than receive compensation. “Compensation is complex and never complete,” chairman Niek Verra told NOS. “This also allows landlords to invest less in making homes more sustainable.”

But if private social housing landlords increase their rents while housing corporations don’t, a distinction is made between social housing tenants, and “that is also inexplicable,” the broadcaster’s sources said. Minister Keijzer is looking for a solution nd promised to present a proposal within two weeks.