Housing protest

Housing is a collective issue

‘Fuck the housing market, housing is a right.’ With that slogan, some 18,000 people united in Amsterdam’s Westerpark on Sept. 12, 2021. They carried protest signs with statements like: ‘You can’t live on a waiting list,’ ‘Houses for people, not for profit’ and ‘A house of your own, for less than a hundred thousand euros.’
Leading up to this Housing Protest (Woonprotest), the housing crisis was a hot topic in the media. This was relatively new; it wasn’t until the articulate middle classes got caught up in the housing crisis that it was treated as an urgent political and public issue. This growing attention fairly paralleled the record rise in home purchase prices from 2019 onwards. But for people with lower incomes, many of whom are assigned to social renting, the housing crisis had been going on for years already.
From within society, a movement of housing activists emerged to connect both the older and new victims of the housing crisis. In doing so, they also influenced how the issue was treated; not just as a housing market crisis, but primarily as a crisis of our housing rights, in which the poorest people are hit the hardest.

Housing protests
On Sept. 12, 2021, activists managed to mobilize the growing dissatisfaction with the housing crisis and the lack of prospects in the largest Housing Protest since the 1980s. In the 1980s an active squatting movement had addressed the housing shortage as well as the vacancy rate with (squatting) actions. At that time, too, this was a criticism of speculation with housing by investors, while many people were looking for a place to live. Many former squats from that period still offer affordable housing or creative spaces in the city today.

As long as affordable housing is out of reach, the Housing Uprising-coalition wants to continue organizing actions.

During the 2021 Housing Protest in Amsterdam the movement, which has joined the Housing Uprising-coalition (Woonopstand), announced a series of demonstrations across the country. The next one in Rotterdam drew between 8,000 and 10,000 protesters, some of whom faced police brutality.
After Rotterdam, people in Arnhem, Tilburg, Nijmegen, The Hague, Utrecht and Groningen also took to the streets to demand their housing rights. As long as affordable housing is out of reach, the Housing Uprising-coalition wants to continue organizing actions. So in February 2023 there was another housing protest in Amsterdam, this time with the slogan ‘Everything is still shitty,’ and with extra emphasis on housing discrimination and inequality.
Melissa Koutouzis is one of the organizers of the housing protests. She would have preferred to see many more people and diversity at the protests, but ‘we did what we could.’ She stresses the importance of a strong movement: ‘The unorganized will always lose out to the organized.’
The problems raised at the protests seem diverse: too high rents, not enough social housing, endless waiting lists, slumlords, gentrification, housing discrimination, extreme increases in homelessness, not being able to find your first home, not being able to move on, and not being able to live somewhere at all. Yet the common denominator of these problems was quickly found: a housing policy that focused on boosting the housing market and home ownership, at the expense of broad and strong public housing with affordable rents. The protests constituted a critique of this housing policy.

Politics of home ownership
Cody Hochstenbach, urban geographer at the University of Amsterdam and author of Uitgewoond: Waarom het hoog tijd is voor een nieuwe woonpolitiek, argues that for the last thirty years national politics has made home ownership one of the highest goals. Therefore home ownership has been encouraged, massively subsidized and glorified. Essentially buyers were considered better citizens, which legitimized privileging and financially supporting the buying market and buyers.
These ideological choices had the effect of effectively privileging homeowners over renters. Hochstenbach writes in Uitgewoond that by 2020 the average homeowner was ninety times better off than a renter. People notice these differences and also want to enter that homeowner-oriented housing market. This transforms them, in Hochstenbach's words, into ‘strategically calculating mini-capitalists.’
On top of that – especially under the second government headed by Mark Rutte – investors from the Netherlands and abroad were drawn into the housing market to buy up houses for rental or speculation purposes. Former Minister Stef Blok visited international stock exchanges with the news that tenants’ rights were being watered down and rents could be raised more easily; this was attractive to investors and a disaster for tenants. In this way, over the past decades, housing has been downgraded from a place to live to a popular and profitable investment property.

Degradation of public housing
The political promotion of home ownership came at the expense of public housing, which became increasingly inadequate and inaccessible. Social renting became a ‘last resort’ for people in vulnerable positions. Because public housing was no longer widely accessible, support for it also declined. Neighborhoods with lots of social housing were labeled ‘problem areas.’ The necessary investments would only start when the original residents had made room for new, more affluent residents; this is all part of the process of gentrification.
The stigma on social housing legitimized harsh budget cuts and additional taxes on the sector. With the landlord levy (2013-2023) the Netherlands was the only country in the world where exclusively social housing was taxed. The result of these measures was the demolition and sale of hundreds of thousands of houses, while the construction of new houses was also at a historically low eb. As a result, the number of social housing units has decreased sharply – by as much as 108,000 between 2013 and 2018 (figures: Woonbond) – while the population continued to grow.
As fewer and fewer people could find a place in the social housing sector, the pressure on the home-owner market increased. Those who could not find a place in that sector had to go to the free rental sector, where rents as well as the proportion of temporary contracts continued to rise. The more attractive the investment climate was made for investors, the more hostile the housing climate became for tenants. This created a situation where homeowners emerged as winners and renters as losers. Because wealth can be passed on from parent to child, these differences carry over into future generations; it forms and reinforces class differences.

Reversing policies
Neoliberal housing policy led to a soured housing market and not to a healthy system of public housing. It translated into policies such as the ‘jubelton’ (a taxfree benefit for starters with wealthy parents), the mortgage interest deduction, the moving of housing to box 3 of the tax system (aka the ‘fun box’), the landlord levy, a limited-access social housing sector, temporary leases and unregulated rents in the free sector.
Many of these measures have been or are now being curtailed or reversed. Terms like public housing and housing rights have permeated the 2021 election manifestos. As of 2022, even the Minister of Public Housing is back, after former Minister Stef Blok dissolved the entire Ministry of Public Housing in 2010. The activist movement has played a big role in bringing about these changes.

Homelessness as a priority
Yet the (proposed) changes are far from enough. Housing rights and public housing may be back on the agenda, but they are not yet guiding a new housing policy. Otherwise, for example, the very worst violation of housing rights would be addressed first: homelessness. But the political focus for now is on ‘build, build, build,’ affordable housing for the middle classes and a role for market players in housing construction and rental.
The housing movement is critical of this. Within the Housing Uprising-movement a manifesto has been drafted with demands for politicians. Koutouzis indicates that eliminating homelessness is a priority as far as they are concerned. Homelessness has increased extremely in recent years. Precise figures are not available because many people are out of sight or out of mind. Hochstenbach assumes the homeless amount to about 100,000 people in Uitgewoond. He points out how telling it is that we get a very precise quarterly update on the price fluctuations on the housing market, but that we do not know how many homeless people there are in the Netherlands.

Instead, we need a housing policy in which housing is treated as a right, and as a collective amenity and responsibility.

Housing as a collective issue
An important step to get out of the housing crisis is to break with the dominant housing ideology of the last thirty years. An ideology in which housing is an investment, a matter of the individual and something better left to the market. Instead, we need a housing policy in which housing is treated as a right, and as a collective amenity and responsibility. Activists, critical thinkers, opinion makers and scholars are contributing to this changing discourse, because this requires an adjustment not only from politics but also from people themselves.
According to Koutouzis, many people are still concerned with ‘winning within the system,’ rather than with betting on systemic change. This is not surprising, she says, because we are used to the neoliberal, individualistic worldview. As a result, we no longer see ourselves as a collective. So one of the questions the housing movement is considering is: ‘How do we make sure we can start thinking more as a collective?’
Hochstenbach also stresses the importance of a collective view on housing. Before policies are made, he says, we need to go back to the drawing board with the questions: ‘How do we all want to live? What does an equitable housing system look like?’
The basis of this, according to Hochstenbach and Koutouzis, is broadly accessible public housing. Renting would no longer be a stepping stone in one’s housing career, and social housing would no longer be an emergency provision, but a good housing option for life. This requires a paradigm shift, substantial investments in public housing, breaking free from the dependence on the market, and reducing the inequality between renters and buyers. Major political changes, in other words.
Meanwhile, there are also people working on a smaller scale to create alternatives to the housing market. These initiatives offer hope and inspiration.

Communal alternatives
One housing form that is on the rise is the housing cooperative. Based on the principle of shared ownership, a group of (future) residents shapes their own living environment. As a collective, they own the entire housing complex, but no one individually owns a home. Therefore, the rent – paid to the collective – always remains affordable. After all, there is no profit motive.
The underlying vision of the ‘commons,’ a term for shared ownership and management, is an inspiration for alternative housing visions and forms. The housing cooperative gives hope, because people are collectively committed to their housing future. They are driven by values other than financial ones, such as community and sustainability. But setting up such a housing cooperative and realizing a housing project takes a lot of time and energy (for now) and is mainly accessible to highly educated people with an influential network. Hochstenbach therefore stresses that housing cooperatives are mainly a nice addition to public housing.

Squat housing policy
Another way in which citizens take matters into their own hands is by squatting. Squatting, as a form of action, is a direct indictment of vacancy. Despite the housing shortage, there are quite a few empty buildings. In 2022, there were some 21,000 in Amsterdam alone, and ten times as much nationwide (figures: Uitkrant).
Until 2010, squatting was a legal housing option. If a building was vacant for a long time, you could occupy it. This changed with the ‘Squatting and Vacancy Act.’ Squatting was criminalized and harsh action was taken against it. Vacancy was also supposed to be tackled, but in practice this hardly got off the ground. Squatters find vacancy morally unjustifiable in combination with the housing shortage, so they say: ‘Law or no law, squatting continues.’ In recent years, the squatting movement has been growing again and there have been more squatting actions.

To understand the added value of squatting for affordable housing and community spaces, it is good to look at the long-term impact of the squatter movement.

Right now, squatting is especially important as a form of action. This is because squatters can easily be evicted from the squatted building, which prevents them from developing and maintaining it as a residential or community space. As a form of action, squatting provides a fierce critique of the housing crisis and the underlying housing policy. Squatting makes the right to a place to live more important than the right to home ownership, and this creates friction with the prevailing ideology of home ownership.
To understand the added value of squatting for affordable housing and community spaces, it is good to look at the long-term impact of the squatter movement. For instance, it is clear that many free cultural spaces such as Paradiso, OT301 and Vrij Paleis have squatter roots. The same goes for many housing groups that still constitute affordable and collective living spaces today.

Land policy
Not only should we challenge the idea of housing as private property, but also the idea of land as private property. In recent years, a lot of land has been privatized and there is a lot of speculation with land. This looks as follows, for example: an investor buys up farmland near the built-up area. Then nothing happens to the land. The investor waits for the zoning plan to change from agricultural to residential. As a result, the value of the land increases enormously. Thanks to the land ownership, the investor now has a dominant position and can earn handsomely from selling it, without having added any value himself. So when we talk about collective ownership and housing, that conversation should include land.
Breaking through individualism, both in our thinking and in our actions, is a key to a livable future. However, this will not happen all by itself, and certainly not if we continue to behave individually like calculating mini-capitalists. Koutouzis stresses: ‘I maintain that we need to organize ourselves, that is the most important thing.’ Activism in the form of dissent and action plays an important role in the process of change. The more people join in, the more impact can be made.