Government can't afford roads, railway to approved new neighborhoods with 30,000 homes
The plans for building new neighborhoods in four municipalities with a total of 30,000 homes have been finalized and approved by the Ministry of Housing. Financing for the housing development has also been secured. But there is a problem. The government doesn’t have the money to build roads and railway lines needed to make these new neighborhoods accessible, NOS reports. So construction cannot begin.
The municipalities in question are Alkmaar, Apeldoorn, Hengelo/Enschede, and Helmond, personally selected by then-Housing Minister Mona Keijzer of the Schoof I Cabinet last year. These locations need €425 million for the infrastructure to make the neighborhoods accessible.
Successive Cabinets have focused on this type of large housing construction to combat the shortage of 400,000 homes. Before Keijzer, Minister Hugo de Jonge of the Rutte IV Cabinet designated 17 locations, and the current Jetten I Cabinet plans to add another 9.
But construction can’t start before there is funding to make all these new homes accessible by road or rail. The previous Cabinet, Schoof I, had a budget of €2.5 billion for the construction of these types of roads, train tracks, and tunnels. But Keijzer allocated these funds to the 17 large-scale construction locations designated by her predecessor. There was no money left for the four new locations.
In a letter to parliament, Keijzer said that it was “up to a new Cabinet” to find the money for roads and railways to Alkmaar, Apeldoorn, Hengelo/Enschede, and Helmond sites. But the new Cabinet doesn’t have the money either.
The Ministry of Housing’s budget has run out, so it falls to the Ministry of Infrastructure, which has already announced a budget deficit of €80 billion between now and 2039 for the maintenance and construction of all infrastructure in the Netherlands. “There is no ATM with free cash here,” Infrastructure Minister Vincent Karremans told NOS. “So we will have to choose. How can we best spend the money for motorists, home seekers, and the economy? That is what we are currently weighing up.”
The four municipalities involved recently sent an urgent letter to the Cabinet, asking it to come up with a solution. “Without this investment, housing in these areas will remain unrealized, and with it, the prospects of thousands of households,” they wrote. “We are ready to build over 30,000 homes in our four large-scale housing development sites: give us the go-ahead. Let us get to work!”
