When voters in the Netherlands head to the polls on Wednesday in elections, one issue will stand out as the most important for many, especially younger people: a rising shortage of affordable housing.
For large groups of students, graduates beginning work, young adults ready to start families and people looking for social housing, finding an affordable home or buying a property in the Netherlands has become nearly impossible.
Too many people are looking for homes, and there are not enough available. That has plunged many Dutch cities into an affordability crisis, for renters as well as for prospective home owners.
“I’d prefer to live by myself, but that’s impossible, even though I earn enough,” said Charlotte Stienstra, 33, a project manager in Amsterdam.
When her long-term relationship ended last year, she moved out of the house she had been renting since she was a student, hoping to buy a place. But getting on the property ladder proved unattainable. Instead, Ms. Stienstra moved in with a roommate in the northern part of Amsterdam, an area with a lot of new construction.
“It’s pretty much a full-time job on the side to find something,” she said.
The problems on the housing market in the Netherlands are the result of a near perfect storm many years in the making, experts say.
The population has grown more over the past decade than the government expected because of an influx of migrants, a mix of workers, expats, students and refugees. At the same time, the average size of households has shrunk — people are living alone more often and longer — increasing the necessity for more, often smaller, homes.
And since the economic crisis of 2008-9, not enough new homes have been built to keep up with the demand, Peter Boelhouwer, a professor of housing systems at Delft University of Technology, said in a phone interview. Building new homes in the Netherlands comes with many local rules and environmental regulations, which can delay the number of homes being built.
Together, these factors have contributed to an estimated shortage of roughly 400,000 homes in the Netherlands, or about 5 percent of the housing stock, according to the Dutch research firm ABF Research.
“There’s an accessibility problem,” said Hans Koster, a professor of urban economics and real estate at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “There isn’t much left for first-time buyers or expats.”
Politicians across the spectrum call housing one of the country’s main issues, but no single party has been able to take clear ownership of the situation, according to a recent poll, although many have ideas.
D66, a center-left party, has promised to build 10 new cities.
The left-wing alliance between the Labor Party and the Green Party, placed second in the polls, called public housing its “top priority” and proposed on its website a tax on landlords’ vacant properties.
The far-right Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders, which has the largest share of seats in the House of Representatives and has been leading the polls, wants a “crisis plan” and “fewer rules.” Mr. Wilders, who has long campaigned against migration, has also said he wants to stop giving asylum seekers who have valid permits to stay in the country priority to social housing.
The group of people Mr. Wilders is talking about makes up about 13 percent of people waiting for social housing in Amsterdam, said Anne-Jo Visser, the director of the Amsterdam Federation of Housing Associations. “That’s not how we’re going to solve the big problem,” she said.
The wait time for one of Amsterdam’s roughly 190,000 affordable housing units is just under 10 years, Ms. Visser said.
Besides first-time buyers and people looking for social housing, middle-income renters are also having trouble.
The number of private rentals has dropped, partly because of a 2024 affordable rent law that has made it less financially attractive for landlords to rent out properties, causing many of them to sell their properties instead.
This is the problem that Elisha van Kouwen, 25, a medical student in her final year, has encountered. Her landlord is selling the building where she shares an apartment with two friends, she said.
Priced out of the rental market, Ms. van Kouwen said she would move back in with her parents in the city of Utrecht. “You’ve built a life somewhere,” Ms. van Kouwen said, “but it’s very difficult to find a place to live.”
Isa Kashi, 27, moved to the Netherlands a year ago from the United States to complete a master’s degree in Amsterdam, and said she had been surprised at how difficult it was to find a place to live. “There’s just constant stress about housing among my friends here,” she said. “It’s constant worry simmering in the background.”
Ms. Kashi moved to the Netherlands from New York, she said, a city with a housing crisis of its own and rising rent prices. Still, she said, finding an apartment to rent in Amsterdam had proved even more difficult.
“In New York, I feel like you’ll find something. There’s enough inventory,” she said. “Here, there just straight up aren’t enough places.”
Rosanne Kropman contributed reporting.
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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