Inclusionary housing in the Netherlands: breaking the institutional path?

Abstract

In an international comparative perspective, the Netherlands was relatively late in introducing Inclusionary Housing (Buitelaar and De Kam in Housing Theory and Society 29(1):56–64, 2012). Referring to a conceptual framework of the institutionalisation of planning regulations, the article links this late introduction, as well as the specific content, and the actual use of inclusionary housing (IH) measures to the context of the Dutch housing and planning system. In the Netherlands, the legal ‘package’ that in 2008 explicitly introduced the powers for local authorities to require IH (both for social/affordable housing and—a unique feature of the Dutch rules—also for privately commissioned housing) was strongly tied to new rules for cost recovery. The article partly draws on a review of existing studies, of the use made of these different elements of the Dutch IH measures, but its main empirical data come from a large survey of strategic choices made by housing associations in the land market. The paper shows that local authorities do use the new legal opportunity to prescribe IH in their land-use plans, but that there is a relatively low actual use of IH requirements ‘with a bite’ in the Netherlands. This outcome reflects the level of congruence of the IH requirements with formal and informal institutions in the Dutch systems for planning and housing. The institutional design of the rules is well attuned to existing path-dependent local policies which still deliver substantial numbers of new social and affordable housing without the use of IH. In these practices, value capturing is partly internalized in the operations of housing associations that develop mixed projects of social and commercial housing. In this respect, the real test of IH measures in the Netherlands is yet to come, depending on the resilience of tried and trusted (other) practices for providing social housing.