Little cheap housing remains in Netherlands

Housing associations offer very little cheap rental housing with rent up to 403 euro. Only 7 percent of available rental homes fall into this cheap category. This is according to an analysis of offered rental homes in eight regions over three weeks by Woonbond, NOS reports. A total of 57 percent were offered at a rent of up to 618 euros, which is considered affordable, the rest were more expensive. The average rent for a newly offered rental home was 606 euros - 29 percent more than the rent that current tenants pay. The average price of homes in the regulated sector was 563 euros - 12 percent higher than three years ago when Woonbond did a similar analysis. "The demolition of affordable stock is happening very fast. This raises the question of whether corporations are still aware that they need to provide affordable housing to people with very modest incomes.", said Ronald Paping of Woonbond.