POLICY REVIEW The Impact of Housing Policy Changes on Housing Associations: Experiences in the Netherlands

Abstract

For decades, housing associations in the Netherlands were the country's landlords of social rented housing par excellence. Presently housing associations own and administer over 90 per cent of the social rented stock, which now comprises 37 per cent of the total Dutch housing stock. The changes in Dutch housing policy which were made from 1993 onwards, have also changed the role and position of the housing associations. The financial ties binding the social housing sector and the national government have largely been dissolved. Responsibility for adequate housing was decentralised from the central government to the local authorities. Municipalities and housing associations have developed a new tradition of performance agreements on local housing policy. This paper reviews the response of housing associations to the circumstances created by the new housing policy of the 1990s.