The Hague wants expats to find a home before they arrive in the city

The Hague wants employers to guarantee that they’ve arranged accommodation for employees from abroad before the expats arrive in the city. The city hopes this will result in fewer expats and migrant workers moving there, alderman Martijn Balster (Housing, PvdA) told NRC. According to him, locals are increasingly displaced in the housing market.

“Expats drive up prices and make housing unaffordable for middle and low-income earners,” Balster said. “It cannot be the case that there is no longer room in the city for people who grew up here due to an unlimited influx of expats and labor migrants. With the message that people with a normal income can no longer commit themselves to their own city, the question arises whether The Hague can still handle the growth of expats and labor migrants.”

According to the municipality, about 20,000 expats and 50,000 migrant workers live in the city. The Hague has over 500,000 residents. According to Balster, The Hague’s housing market is even tighter than in other large cities. The Hague is the most densely populated city in the Netherlands and its location between the North Sea and nature reserves means there is little space to expand. The Hague, therefore, wants fewer expats, migrant workers, and international students moving to the city.

Balster’s arguments are somewhat countered by Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN special rapporteur on adequate housing. In March, he released a report stating that government policy, not immigrants is behind the Netherlands’ housing shortage. According to Rajagopal, some highly qualified expats in “specific industries” and “specific areas” could pose “some competition” to locals and drive up housing prices. “But this is not, by all available evidence, the cause of the general housing crisis in the Netherlands,” he said in the report.

Rotterdam experimented with requiring employers to arrange accommodation for their expats before bringing them to the city last year. The results will be presented to outgoing Minister Karien van Gennip of Social Affairs and Employment later this month.