GroenLinks-PvdA, VVD clash on mid-market rentals in election debate

Candidates from GroenLinks-PvdA and VVD clashed on Thursday evening over regulations for mid-range rental housing. “For GroenLinks-PvdA, piling up regulations is much more important than piling up bricks,” said Jurgen Nobel, VVD member and outgoing State Secretary for Participation and Integration, in an election debate in De Balie.

GroenLinks-PvdA parliamentarian Habtamu de Hoop defended the regulations implemented over a year ago to lower rent in the mid-market sector. Nobel called the Affordable Rent Act a “horrific law.”

According to Nobel, the experts who warned in advance that the law would lead to increased sales of rental properties were right. The Council of State called this a real risk. “The mid-range segment has completely disappeared,” Nobel said.

De Hoop responded that he was “relieved” to hear from “a State Secretary in this Cabinet who is willing to listen to the advice of the Council of State.” Schoof I coalition partners, both current and former, have previously criticized the Council of State. BBB leader Caroline van der Plas recently called the advisory body politically biased, and PVV leader Geert Wilders previously instructed voters to ignore “these unelected bureaucrats.”

Research published on Wednesday by the economic research agency SEO showed that the Affordable Rent Act did indeed make investing in rental housing less attractive, but that most mid-range rental properties are likely to remain. New construction can also replace the rental properties sold into the owner-occupied market, where the influx of former rentals has resulted in less steep price increases in recent months.

“Don’t let the VVD convince you that more market access will lead to more mid-range rental properties,” said De Hoop. “You’ll simply get more expensive rental properties.” He’d rather invest primarily in new social housing.

Nobel is against that idea. “I only see people becoming increasingly dependent on the government. That’s exactly what the VVD doesn’t want,” he said. “What I hear from GroenLinks-PvdA is that they actually want to put even more people on the government’s life support system.” Nobel’s party wants tenants of ground-level social housing to have the right to buy their homes.