Council of State also critical of rent freeze for social tenants
The Council of State is extremely critical of the government’s plan to freeze the rents of social housing tenants for two years. The government’s most important advisor gave the proposal its most negative assessment, urging the government not to submit it to parliament at all, sources told the Telegraaf.
According to the newspaper’s insiders, the Council called the proposal hasty, said the government did not properly follow the legislative process, and the substantiation is shaky. The government also did not give housing corporations time to prepare for the big drop in income the rent freeze would cause.
The Council of State’s criticism makes it even less likely that the PVV, VVD, NSC, and BBB plan will actually see the light of day. Opposition parties and housing corporations are also massively opposed to the proposal.
The opposition parties are in favor of a rent freeze, but Housing Minister Mona Keijzer’s proposal will only benefit social housing tenants who rent from housing corporations. The around 500,000 social housing tenants renting from private landlords will fall by the wayside.
The housing corporations also warned that the rent freeze will severely hamper housing construction. They use their rent income to borrow money for new construction, and the rent freeze would shrink that budget by around 30 billion euros. It also leaves them with less money to make their homes sustainable, saddling tenants with high energy bills for longer.
The government allocated 1 billion euros to compensate housing corporations, but that is only a third of the income they would lose. Umbrella organization Aedes is going to court to try and get the rent freeze scrapped.
The coalition is not entirely enthusiastic about the plan either, as became apparent in a parliamentary debate last week. The VVD and NSC made little effort to defend the deal made during the spring budget negotiations. NSC MP Merlien Welzijn said she was “stunned and astonished” that her party leader gave the green light for this plan. And VVD MP Peter de Groot called it “not the VVD’s first choice.”
A ‘D’ assessment is not lightly given by the Council of State, though this is the second one the Schoof I Cabinet received in a short time. The previous negative assessment was for the NSC plan to have pension participants vote in a referendum on whether their fund should join the new pension system, which has since been voted down in parliament. The advice is not binding.
