The Netherlands - ten new cities?

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1:07Thanks for downloading this edition of Crossing Continents. Last year I was in the Netherlands reporting a euthanasia story and during that trip several people said to me, I think you should really take a look at what's happening with housing. We've got a crisis, I was told. In the UK we're used to hearing about a chronic shortage of homes, including here on Radio 4, but I was surprised to hear this about the Netherlands. So when housing became the most pressing issue in the recent Dutch general election, it seemed like a good idea to board the Eurostar to Amsterdam once again and find out how people are responding to the immense squeeze on accommodation and the kind of solutions being talked about.

1:46Here's crossing continents, the Netherlands, 10 new cities.

1:53Hello, Marga. Good morning. We've come to see your beautiful house. I hope you like it. Hi, I'm Linda. Nice to meet you. We're in Delft. It's a traditional ancient watery Dutch town. But there isn't much that's traditional about the home Maha shares with her husband, Gert. Are we moving? No, not anymore, because we are a little bit stuck on the mud. OK, but the idea is that these houses, they go up and down. Yes, yes, you can see it outside. OK, so the house is attached to a pillar. A pillar, yeah, and it's moving up and down. And so when there's a lot of water, the house will rise? Yes, then it will rise, yes.

2:39OK, and what does that feel like when it rises? No, you don't feel it at all. There are six floating homes here. They slide up and down the vertical steel columns that are driven into the reservoir's bed. This is design and technology with huge global potential in an era of climate emergency. And these aren't boats. They're proper spacious houses. So this is a beautiful square room. It's got the kitchen at one end. It's got huge picture windows out onto the water. Yes, well, that was the idea. And the nice thing of living on the water is that you have a lot of light. But the Netherlands has a massive housing deficit, an estimated shortage of some 400 ,000 homes.

3:24That's what we're exploring in this week's Crossing Continents. Could watery dwellings, floating blocks of flats even, be part of the solution? Rutger Derhaf, the director of Blue 21, a company specialising in these structures, and the initiator of the Delft project, certainly thinks so. Of course, six floating houses will not solve the housing crisis, even in Delft. But projects that are being developed now are really apartment complexes, so it would be more units on one platform. and for instance in Zwolle we're involved in a project that has 40 apartment units within one 40 apartments within one floating complex so that's the next step and of course if you make a couple of those then it starts to to add up at the numbers that it's it's not the only solution but it's part of the solution so this is an example of the netherlands actually working with water and not trying to fight water yes i think so because we have a long tradition of water management in our country.

4:21So how quickly do you think we might see floating apartment blocks in the Netherlands? How soon? It could even happen next year. Our most likely future Prime Minister, Mr Rob Jetten, I was together with him in a television programme. He proposed to build 10 new cities in the Netherlands, his political party, and he proposed to do one of those 10 floating. In the Netherlands' recent general election, when Rob Jetten and his D66 centre-left party won the most votes, housing was the number one issue. And the 10 New Cities pledge was by far the most radical offering. The Netherlands isn't alone in confronting a crisis in accommodation, but every nation has its own story about how it got there.

5:10After the devastation of the Second World War, there was a construction boom in the Netherlands. Money poured into building desperately needed homes by both the private sector and state-supported housing associations, providing accommodation for lower-income households. By the 1990s, with free market thinking in the ascendancy, subsidies to housing associations were abolished, impacting their ability to build. The global economic crash of 2008 burst the housing bubble and construction slowed spectacularly. Since then, a perfect storm of steeply rising construction costs, environmental restrictions and a shortage of skilled labour have meant the number of new homes completed annually has fallen far short.

5:55At the same time, a surge in migration, many of them EU citizens coming to work in the Netherlands' booming economy, and an increase in ageing and single-person households has meant demand has soared. While we're in Delft, we visit one of the Netherlands' foremost experts on the housing crisis. Yeah, I'm Peter Bullhauer and I'm a professor of housing systems here in Delft University in the Netherlands. So let's talk about the kind of bigger solutions that are being talked about now in the Netherlands. The D66, the party that will probably form the Netherlands next government, has talked about 10 new towns.

6:34Yeah, that's a marketing strategy. It's not about 10 new towns. Now, actually, we have a new document. It's agreed on that we will have 21 new big housing programmes. And that includes the 10 new towns? Probably, yes. They say, okay, these 21 are part of it. And some of them are inside cities, that could be old industrial areas, but some of them are also outside cities, so they want to build more in the country. So are you optimistic then about this plan? That's a good plan. I think it's good to have more possibilities for building it. The goal is to build 100 ,000 units every year. That's the goal.

7:10But that's been the goal for a few years, right? In the last two years it went down, so we're not going in the right direction. So, in desperation, with limited housing options, people end up living where they shouldn't.

7:25In the central Netherlands, outside the village of Lunteren, we spot low-flying geese and grazing farm animals as Romy Quint drives us through the rural landscape. But there are also shaggy Shetland ponies and posters advertising mini-golf, Signs that tourism is important here. So, first impressions, Romy, this doesn't look like a kind of a holiday bungalow. No, it looks like a normal house, doesn't it? It looks like a normal house, yeah. Romy lives here with her 10-year-old, in a community of 140 houses. But even though it's brick-built, not a caravan or prefab, this site's designated a recreational holiday park, so residing here year-round is prohibited.

8:10But in the Netherlands, an estimated 100 ,000 people and probably thousands more are living in parks meant for short holiday stays. Romy moved in after her relationship with the father of her child ended. I was not in an ideal situation financially, so I moved in with my parents and lived with them for a bit with my little baby back then. And during that time, the local council turned a blind eye on living here. They turned a blind eye to living on a holiday park? Yeah, yeah. So my dad, through his company, bought this house and I just paid rent to my dad's company and lived here. Romy attempted a reconciliation with her partner, but moved back to her dad's holiday home when that failed.

8:56By then, the local authority was taking notice. And even if Romy's particular park has none of the usual holiday facilities, restaurants, swimming pools, showers, People living here permanently can be fined a whopping 20 ,000 euros. I mean, I suppose from the municipality's point of view, there are very good reasons why they don't want people living in holiday parks. In terms of the facilities, in terms of the sewage, in terms of the services, all of that. You can see why they might want to enforce the rules. Totally agree. Yeah, that's what the council keeps saying. but I think in this instance they're being a bit too rigid.

9:36And what are your options? I mean, you've got a child who's 10 years old. If you can't live here, what happens? I would have to move back in with my parents who are 78 and 75 and that would be my only option then. Yeah. Yeah. And if you were to rent somewhere locally, what kind of prices are you looking at? How expensive might that be? Yeah, that would be like 1 ,500 euros. Would it also be too expensive for me? Much more than the 650 euros she's paying her dad.

10:13Another response to the scarcity of decent accommodation at an affordable price is something the Dutch used to be famous for. South of Amsterdam in Amstelveen, close to the Netherlands' mega international airport, A hand-painted wooden sign on sturdy iron gates announces the location of Krakenberg. Kraken being the Dutch word for squatter. So there's a combination lock there. Yeah. That's easier, otherwise you have to give everybody keys. Behind the entrance lies a piece of wasteland. There are caravans, a few cars and some hand-built shelters, a bit like large sheds. It's home to 16 people. So it's already empty for 10 years.

10:58And the reason that we're here, you don't hear it today, actually, but it's underneath the route of Schiphol, like the airport. Oh, it's the flight path. The flight path. And so there's a lot of airplane noise. This is Skye, a sustainable energy engineer, and she's lived here since the squat was founded in 2023. And because of the rules around airplane noise, then you're not allowed to build, because that's actually too unhealthy to have this amount of noise. But it's a huge piece of land, and the reasoning that we made is that the plane should not be before people living here. Like, planes should not be placed before housing.

11:36It's crazy that we make these priorities. In the 1960s and 70s, squatting became a mass social movement. Now, with homes at a premium, the crackers are back. Skye, whose mum was a squatter back in the day too, became disillusioned with accommodation on offer in Amsterdam, as did her partner, Peer. Yeah, I used to live in a quite nice shared room in another city and then I moved to Amsterdam and then I was illegally subletting an attic. And yeah, so then we heard about this piece of land. Then we were like, oh, but what if we just quad it and start living on the land? And then, yeah, we were here for about a day and then we called the police and said like, hey, we're living here.

12:18And then the police came and they said, yeah, you're living here. and since then we live here. Although squatting was made a criminal offence in 2010, it seems there are loopholes in the law, with courts perhaps reluctant to take action in a housing crisis. So we're on a kind of like a wooden walkway that's been put down and it's been cut. You've cut these long grasses on either side. It's very pretty, isn't it? Yeah, it's very pretty. But you're surrounded by these massive, great... Look, you've got a Radisson hotel there. Skye lives here in a van, but Pia's building his own home. It's ambitious.

12:59OK, so hang on a second, what's this made of? Yeah, so the facade of the building is solar panels. So I just bought this trailer, and then I built this whole house on top of it. We go inside Pia's homemade residence. It's a small, very tall, square box. There's barely room to swing a cat. so you've got a bed that you've built kind of like a mezzanine bed yeah exactly and it's quite high isn't it how how tall is the structure it's just so high that it's allowed on the road it's road legal basically it's 420 high what so you can transport it exactly where are you going to go i know if we ever have to leave i would like to take this take it with you because yeah it's a lot of work and uh yeah fantastic yeah and you've got a skylight there yeah so you lie in bed and look at the stars?

13:45Yeah, I can, yeah. The hub of the community looks a bit like a Swiss chalet, built in a day by the Krakenburgers and their supporters as a communal space. There's a hot water shower, a toasty comfy sitting room, and a kitchen where Piers stewing pears. So what do they make of that D66 pledge to build ten new towns? I mean, I think it's pretty clear it's like a election campaign. Because housing was the biggest issue in your recent election, right? Yeah, I think it is. The Netherlands actually had a great social housing system for years and they sold a lot of those houses to the free market or to private buyers, private investors.

14:32I worked for a while for the municipality of Amsterdam and what we see is that there's an extreme amount of really expensive houses that are actually empty. so we have already a lot of buildings but we're not using them in the way that people need like a lot of people start working from home during covid so a lot of offices actually closed if we transform offices to like student housing or starter housing or cooperative housing and i also think in this way of being able to share a kitchen or a communal space like using less appliances having less costs for like sharing tools sharing like facilitating that in a way that housing can be cheaper.

15:10You don't need to buy, like, not everybody needs an oven. Like, living way less individualistic and living with more people together. This is summer at its peak. Whole Foods Market Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season. Fresh, organic, and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto, and artisanal cheese. Then fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever proteins and fresh produce. Savor the season. Shop Summer Fruit Fest at Whole Foods Market. Don't play games with us. A vicious gang of hackers causing chaos for businesses, councils and hospitals.

15:54What if I don't finish this treatment and this cancer grows? But they didn't care. I'm dying laughing. Making outrageous demands for money. They wanted millions. It was high tech and high stakes. The country's under attack. And it was highly secretive until someone exposed it all. Cyberhack, season four, The Conti Files. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

16:22I doubt the Dutch are lining up to adopt Skye's vision of communal living en masse, but the point she makes about empty properties in Amsterdam is being taken very seriously.

16:39We're in one of these lovely areas in Amsterdam, beside the canal. These are, I'm guessing, their buildings, they're gabled, red brick, tall Dutch buildings. I guess that they date from around, some of them probably, 17th, 18th century? Yeah, the foundation is sometimes still from the 17th century. Hannes van der Poel, a lawyer for the city of Amsterdam, enforces local laws on empty properties. Officially, there are about 10 ,000 houses in Amsterdam that don't have a registered inhabitant. Research shows in the Netherlands that about 20 % of those places are actually empty. So that's about 2 ,000.

17:19That's about 2 ,000, 2 ,500. In Amsterdam, they are actually empty over a year period. In Amsterdam, a property that's vacant for more than six months must be registered with the city council. Failure to do so results in a fine of€4 ,500 for a private individual, €9 ,000 for professional landlords, designed as a deterrent to anyone keeping a house or flat unoccupied. We say in a housing crisis this is not OK. We get about 800 reports from neighbours in the city about empty houses, that they can't believe why a house is empty for longer than a year when there are so many people looking for a house.

17:58But now the new thing for the City Council is from the 1st of January 2026, you've got a new ordinance on second homes in Amsterdam. Tell me about that. Yes, you're right. So far until now, everybody outside of Amsterdam could just buy a house in Amsterdam and keep it empty. use it as a second home. Sometimes they use it a few months a year, but we have a lot of examples of people not using it for one or two years and then only use it for a few weeks. And where are they, those people? Somewhere in China, somewhere in the Middle East, somewhere, some in America. So, but then after 1st of January, you can still get a second home, but you need a permit.

18:42So, I mean, what you're doing, obviously this is important work and clearly it's supported by the citizens but how much of a solution for amsterdam's housing crisis is this drop in the ocean right but everything helps every house that we can get back that helps we stroll along beside the canal until we reach a grand building hannis says has just been refurbished after standing empty for a while it's for sale looks pretty good now and use it's very nice so it's all painted cream and black it's beautiful and it's a four storey is it got an attic on the top yeah probably not for me as a government worker to buy but uh somebody and what about the sale i mean how long do you allow something to be on sale yeah so the the regular time for a suitable house to be lived in again is two months if you're going to sell it it's four months and if they don't sell it in four months what happens well then there's the penalty then there's the penalty so they've got to bring the price down if it's if it's not moving because i think some people listening to you might think this is outrageous this state intervention in private property and how people sell their properties and how much they sell them for i can understand that feeling but in amsterdam the housing shortage is such a problem that we cannot afford houses like this just stand still for more than four or five months because you don't get the price that you want.

20:13So we're going to force you to sell it anyway for another price or maybe to rent it out if you don't get the price right now.

20:24The rental market has also become increasingly regulated. In 2024, affordable rent laws were extended from the lower section of the market to mid-range properties, capping the maximum price landlords can charge. And most temporary rental contracts were banned too to give tenants more protection and to stop landlords raising rents at the end of a typical two-year contract. But those whose business is real estate claim the changes are counterproductive in a housing crisis. At this moment we have like 15 projects in development here in The Hague. Like Martin Lenser, who specialises in converting properties to accommodate more households in The Hague.

21:06and we're already responsible for adding 800 apartments to the Hague residential market. So here we are, we've met you in the centre of the Hague and we're looking at one of your developments in process. So tell us about this building because it looks like quite a traditional Hague building. Yeah, this whole neighbourhood is pre-war, so 1930s. Actually, those are the most neighbourhoods that have really potential to have a transformation because we need to make these old buildings more sustainable and they need renovation. So you combine them together and you can do really transformation. The upper apartment was quite big and we split it up and on the top, on the flat roof, we'll add an extra apartment.

21:50OK, so you're adding two more households to this building. Exactly. That's what we do. OK, all right. We head inside to take a look at the work in progress. People like Martin Lentzer have been instrumental in creating more homes. But he isn't happy. The extended rent caps and the end to temporary rental contracts, together with the amount of tax he has to pay as a property developer, mean the numbers just aren't working for him anymore. We used to create all new apartments for the rental market, but the whole regulations have changed one and a half year ago. And also the tax regulations changed.

22:30And actually, if we would keep this for rental, we would have a loss instead of a slight profit. So you can't make your money back? No. The upshot is he's selling. Once this conversion's finished, it'll go on the market. Martin isn't alone. With me, the whole market of private investors are selling instead of investing in rental property. And what does that mean for the housing crisis, though, here in the Netherlands, if there's far fewer properties to rent? That the people that are able to buy have more choices, but the people who are not able to buy, they have no choices anymore. So the rental market is really decreasing and especially the new regulated segment of the market.

23:14Now the argument about the rent caps is that you need to create more property at a fairer rent for people in the middle of the market and that landlords perhaps like you, people might think actually you've had a really good time, You've made a lot of money over the last 10 or 15 years. Now perhaps it's time to give back a little bit? But all costs have also risen, and if you need to accept a lower rent at this point of time, you will make a loss. Who will continue his business by making a loss? If your D66 party form the next government, they're talking about 10 new towns. Is that exciting for you?

23:54The 10 new towns is a nice idea, a nice vision. But this generation that's waiting for a house cannot be helped out with this kind of vision area because it's 20, 30, maybe 40 years in time. The D66 are talking about new cities in the water, in the farmer area. But at this moment, we need to really think about making it faster. And faster is a lot of small projects using the buildings we already have.

24:25But although developers like Martin complain about the excessive amount of time it takes to get planning permission for anything let's not forget the Dutch have form when it comes to not just building new cities but also creating the land on which to construct them In the 20th century, the Zyder Zee project halted the sea in the north of the Netherlands with a massive dam A lake was created and slowly, with hydraulic engineering, dikes and pumping stations, new land emerged from the water. This is the province of Flevoland, the site of several new towns and cities.

25:03The short ride from Amsterdam travelling east brings you to the largest of them, Almira, founded in 1975 and still under construction. So we've got here diggers, bulldozers, tractors, quite a large area here. What's being built? There was a newer school for higher education being built in Almira because the city of Almira has a lot of growth in it. And we are looking for a place for our own people to study and now they all have to go to places like Amsterdam and Utrecht to get their education. And in the future they will be able to get it in their own city. Alderman Alexander Sprongs, the elected socialist member of the local authority in Almira, and responsible for housing.

25:46Almira is at the moment the seventh city of the Netherlands. Seventh largest. Seventh largest city. And in the foreseeable future, if possible, we will build another 30 ,000, 35 ,000 houses to become the fifth city of the Netherlands. If possible, he says. Because there's a great big question mark over those 30 ,000 to 35 ,000 new homes. Why? Electricity. The Netherlands were suffering from grid congestion and Almira as a fast-growing city is suffering especially hard from this problem. Grid congestion, it isn't a supply problem. The Netherlands actually exports electricity. It's domestic distribution, getting the power from one place to another, cabling, infrastructure.