“Better Use of Existing Housing Stock: Minister De Jonge’s Plans to Create Additional Homes”

Minister Hugo de Jonge thinks that between 80,000 and 260,000 additional homes can be created in existing houses, apartments and vacant buildings. This can be done, for example, by building an extra floor or dividing a house into separate floors.

It should also become easier to build a so-called micro-home in the backyard or yard. De Jonge also wants to see whether the rules for cohabitation and landlady rental can be made less complex.

“Especially now that new construction is having a more difficult time, we must make the best possible use of the existing housing stock in order to create as much living space as possible,” says De Jonge in his letter ‘Better use of the existing stock’ to the House of Representatives.

De Jonge wants about 900,000 homes to be added by 2031, but that will not be easy. Due to nitrogen, less can be built, rising interest rates hold back investors and rising construction costs make new construction much more expensive. The minister therefore hopes to find more living space in already built houses and vacant offices and factories.

Becomes al langer There has been talk of making better use of the existing housing stock, but in practice this is not going smoothly, according to De Jonge’s letter. Building extra floors – called toppings – is a good way to add homes to a building. But municipalities and local residents are often very difficult about it. And it goes slowly because there are no standard floors for several houses yet.

Topping up involves both expanding an existing house and building additional homes on the same lot. De Jonge is mainly thinking of the latter variant, which could then result in 100,000 extra homes, especially for corporation homes built after 1965. He will talk to municipalities and housing corporations or about more flexible rules and more standard kits from the factory.

De Jonge also wants to make it easier to divide existing homes, especially in the big cities. Research shows that this approach can generate between 80,000 and 160,000 additional homes. In recent years there has been a lot of aversion in municipalities to splitting up for fear of deterioration. There were fears of ‘rooming out’, whereby project developers remodeled a space into cubicles and then put too many migrant workers or students in it.

Especially for outside the Randstad conurbation, it is being examined whether it can be made easier to build a so-called ‘micro home’, ie a small house in the backyard or in the yard. Many people want to provide accommodation for their parents or children in this way, but municipalities often reject submitted proposals because of existing regulations.

A campaign on landlady rental should encourage residents of houses that are too large to rent out a room to a student, a status holder or another temporary house seeker.

In the Netherlands, about 30,000 homes have been vacant for a long time. Since 2022, municipalities have been given more options to tackle this, for example with fines against vacancy. De Jonge wants municipalities to actually do this now.