Ons Nieuwe Hof

The end of Amsterdam housing cooperative Ons Nieuwe Hof

Where did the idea for Ons Nieuwe Hof come from?
I had been a member of a cooperative housing association in Amsterdam called de Samenwerking for quite a long time. That’s a large, wealthy association that, simply put, is on lockdown because there are a lot of old members; no new members – except children of existing members – are admitted anymore. De Samenwerking owns some 900 homes and has more than 4,000 members. There are also sympathizing members who give financial support because they think it’s a good concept, but many of the members hope that they can one day occupy a Samenwerking-home.
Your membership number determines your position in the queue. The person with the lowest number who applies for a vacant home gets it. This means that people with high numbers have to wait very long, but also that older members who have moved out of town can come back later in life. The average age of people in houses of the Samenwerking is quite high. At times it seems more like a retirement home than a housing cooperative. I myself have not lived in a Samenwerking-home anymore for a long time, but I am still a member, so if I need a house, I can get it relatively quickly because of my low number.
In 2013 I came up with the idea to create a sister association for de Samenwerking, a new housing association to build new dwellings, using the capital of de Samenwerking as a guarantee. We initially started as Samenwerking 2, but that was changed to Ons Nieuwe Hof after protests from de Samenwerking. The most frustrating thing (still) is that a poll of Samenwerking-members showed strong support for setting up a new association, but despite that, de Samenwerking has never been willing to support us financially or guarantee us.

Why did de Samenwerking stop building? They could have created a nice regenerative system.
The Association was founded around 1900 to build mid-range housing for people who earned too much for the social sector but too little to buy for themselves. In 1910 the first houses were realized and in the 1920s they managed to acquire a large area around the Roelof Hartplein and the Hobbemakade. Most members are now very attached to this neighborhood, but expansion there is virtually out of the question. Other areas in the city, and certainly further from the South or outside the ring road, are not very popular among the members and therefore nothing is happening anymore.

It is a terrible waste of potential; even banks regularly wonder why nothing more is being done.

It is a terrible waste of potential; even banks regularly wonder why nothing more is being done. Personally I think this is mainly due to the age of the members; elderly people are more anxious, have no appetite for renewal anymore, are afraid of going bankrupt or that rents will go up. These are nonsensical objections based mainly on conservatism.
By the way, de Samenwerking is immeasurably wealthy. Their property is worth between €500 and €600 million, and there are hardly any outstanding mortgages. The care for their property is excellent. They do much more and better maintenance than housing corporations, and are very reluctant to raise rents. The result is that houses that were once meant to be middle-rent are now relatively cheap, especially by Amsterdam standards. The rent of most houses is between €800 and €900 per month, so people stay in them for a very long time – 40 years is no exception.
When the government came up with the landlord levy in 2013, de Samenwerking would have had to pay a fair amount. They miraculously escaped though, because a large part of their houses are national monuments that fall outside this levy scheme. As far as I was concerned, that was all the more reason to do something with the accumulated capital. In those days, when prices were still low, there were even opportunities to take over existing property or build on the Stadionplein, but they didn’t want to. The only expansion which has been undertaken the last 100 years is a small piece on Beethoven Straat, nothing else.

What does the organizational structure of de Samenwerking look like? How are decisions being taken?
It is a cooperative association consisting of three bodies: the general assembly (ALV), the members’ council and the board. I should mention that the board members are also members of the members’ council; there are regular discussions about that, because of conflicts of interest, but in the end the ALV is the highest power.
One of the big decisions made in recent years was to stop the possibility of joining the association. It was felt that there were enough members; however, an exception was made for children of members. There was quite some discussion about this, because not everyone agreed with this exception. Even the board wanted to lift the exception for members’ children, but the ALV then decided that this arrangement could remain in force. There you can see again a piece of that same conservatism; taking care of yourself and your children comes first. That’s quite an exclusive system.

Was the design and intention of Ons Nieuwe Hof really focused on continuing to expand and do business?
Certainly, we wanted to start with one building, but expand over time to several hundred homes. I have always looked with great interest at what is happening in Switzerland. They have very large housing cooperatives there, I wanted that too. To be clear, we were not a ‘living cooperative’ but a housing cooperative. We were not looking for one living group in one building but rather for an amorphous group of people, not just like-minded people, and looking to expand.

Have you ever considered looking at existing properties. Or did you prefer new constructions?
We preferred new constructions, designing them ourselves, but for that we had to rely on the municipality of Amsterdam which was handing out the tenders. The big problem then (and it actually still is) was the price of land. I can’t say anything else than that the municipality is quite a money-grubber, often worse than developers. They initially asked us and other interested parties to bid for the option price in addition to the normal ground lease price. The one with the highest bid got the right of the ground lease. I remember that we once applied for the Steigereiland on IJburg. At the time, after much calculation, we made an offer of €60,000. We lost because someone else put €600,000 on the table. That’s the free market, where as a cooperative you have virtually no chance.
In recent years the municipality has adopted a different policy, with lots exclusively for housing cooperatives. Fine, you might think, but for us it turned out to be another problem. We did not qualify because we were not a living cooperative but a housing cooperative, and that did not comply with their rules. When a plot became available on Centrumeiland in IJburg, it went to De Warren; a fairly classic living group, with people who all knew each other, and with no intention of expanding in the future. To stand a chance, we would have had to conform. The municipality explicitly did not want larger housing cooperatives. In our case, that would have meant duplicating the association Ons Nieuwe Hof for each new property, and of course that makes no sense at all. Another rule that got in our way was that the association could only consist of tenants, while we had different types of members. We had members who were looking for housing acutely, but also people who became members with an eye on the future and members who just wanted to support us. The municipality’s objection was that non-tenant members could push through decisions to the detriment of tenant members. Nonsensical, because all members of the cooperative must subscribe to the objectives, and we had established that firmly legally. Members acting to the detriment of the association would simply be expelled.

After de Samenwerking refused to support you, how did you want to arrange financing?
We started talking to a bank, ABN AMRO to be exact, because they were willing. At the time, the bank wanted to finance about 70% of the budget. They were even playing a bit with the loan to cost and loan to value, two different ways of calculating value. With a bit of luck, they would have wanted to finance 70% of your loan to value, which is a lot higher than loan to cost.
The rest of the financing had to be arranged through the loan fund and by putting in a piece of our own deposit. With us, that piece of equity was at least one share in the cooperative at a price of €250. As soon as you actually got a house through Ons Nieuwe Hof, you would have to buy 20 shares. That €5000 own deposit was the maximum for us.
Maarten van Poelgeest’s plan was that you would get 70% financing from the bank, 5% own deposit and the remaining 25% through a government loan fund. The problem is that 5% financing often exceeds €5000 per person. Thus, with the 5% rule, the amount becomes quite high for many ‘ordinary’ people. When the loan fund finally arrived, we started to focus on that and decided to arrange the last necessary bit through crowdfunding or bonds, if necessary. But then suddenly the municipality came up with another new rule. They suddenly said they did want to cover that 25% through the loan fund, but that this could never be more than €40,000 per home. That’s pretty tough if you’re building homes that cost €300,000 each, because then 25% is a lot higher than €40,000. They were afraid that the fund would run out of money too quickly, while of course the fund is a loan, not a gift. These are homes in Amsterdam, if we would go bankrupt the homes would most likely be sold for much more than we had built them for.

I read that you made 22 attempts to get a plot but never succeeded.
True, we bumped our heads against the rules a number of times when municipal lots were issued. In many of the other attempts, even though we had the financing in place, we did not even reach the final selection. Sometimes we ran into problems because of our link with de Samenwerking. People thought they were too introverted. Or they saw me and asked if I wanted to build for a club of elderly people, whereas our association counts quite a few different generations. Every time it was something else. If we would investigate every attempt, we could write a whole book about it.

In the Kolenkitbuurt in 2021, it looked like it was going to work. What went wrong?
Yes, that’s a bizarre story as well, but I actually want to go back to the beginning. The first time we entered the competition, but lost to De Warren, we still received a laudatory report. With the next attempt, we were 4th and De Nieuwe Meent won. In that case suddenly there was no report card, instead points were handed out. However, these did not make sense at all. We were so bewildered that we were about to file a lawsuit. We received hardly any points for our financing plan, which was put together thoroughly, while De Nieuwe Meent – whose financing was later found to be faulty – received the full number of points. I think it was pure nepotism, but we were not allowed to say that aloud. After talking to a lawyer about the possibility of filing summary proceedings, we gave up. The lawyer was willing to do it, but it would cost between 7 and 10 grand. We thought that was a waste of money.
But back to the Kolenkitbuurt. That lot was released together with a lot on IJburg, but only for parties that were left over from previous selections. So no new groups. That meant that we were in the running with four or five other parties, for two lots. Since the municipality did not want to make a decision based on our plans, a draw was held. Akropolis won the draw and had the right to choose between lot A or lot B. They chose the slightly smaller lot on IJburg, and then the Kolenkit remained. To our surprise we came in 2nd in the draw and were offered the Kolenkit. We wanted that, so we made a plan. That was quite a hassle because the municipality wanted a ‘house of the neighborhood’ to go with it, while we wanted care housing. But anyway, we came to an agreement and started working on the financing. According to the rules of the municipality, there should be 80% medium rent and 20% free rent, while we had thought that depending on your income you would have to pay a rent of between €1000 and €1200. The municipality thought that was too high; they wanted an average rent of around €900 per month. By now we had already spoken to ABN AMRO, they wanted to go into business with us again with a loan of 70% of the budget, but only under the condition that the other 30% would be well covered. We had hoped that the municipality would cover the agreed 25% with their loan fund, but that amount would exceed the maximum amount of €40,000 per house. And then it turned out that they didn’t want to cover the mandatory 20% free rent with the loan fund because that’s not what the fund was for. Eventually the municipality did want to go up to a €50,000 loan fund coverage per home, but we still couldn’t make it with that. We then started talking to a pension fund. They wanted to finance, on the condition that they would then also own the building. We were only willing to agree to that if we could buy the building back in due course, if we had the right of first refusal and if part of the surplus profit would benefit the cooperative. However, this construction, in which we no longer needed the loan fund, was not agreed upon by the municipality, so our plan was rejected and we were put aside. Another attempt failed.

Why did you decide to dissolve Ons Nieuw Hof altogether in 2023?
We made one last attempt after the rejection of the Kolenkit. That was at the August Allebéplein in Nieuw West, a large project with some 130 homes that were made available through free registration. You were only allowed to register if you were approved by the municipality as a real living cooperative, if you were in the so-called ‘card box.’ However, we were told that we again did not meet the requirements and therefore would not be in the card box. In the end, we chimed in and said we would comply with all the rules if we were assigned the lot. Then we were allowed to enter the application process anyway. In the end, there were four applications.
Because it was such a large project, we had explicitly stated that we wanted to encourage throughput from the neighborhood and make about half of the homes available to people with social professions. In doing so, we were responding to the desire of the municipality, to have a good chance of being assigned the lot. Unfortunately, it was again not enough and the activists of De Bundel came in as number one, while they, like De Nieuwe Meent, would in all likelihood have problems with their financing.

After that rejection it was all over for me. There was clearly no room for ‘ordinary’ people like us.

After that rejection it was all over for me. There was clearly no room for ‘ordinary’ people like us. We then called a special members’ meeting and indicated that as a board we no longer saw any possibility of getting anything off the ground in Amsterdam. The members were quite disappointed about that, but nobody wanted to take over from the board, so then it stopped.
I'm still pretty sour about what happened. I regret that we never got a chance, while in my opinion others have been unduly favored. I don’t want to think too much about it anymore. It’s really over now.

Do you have any tips for people who still want to give it a try?
Besides having a good plan, you should pay particular attention to financing. Go talk to a bank right away to learn that you probably won’t get 70% financing, but 60% or even less. That’s really important.
For the municipality I also have some tips. I think municipal policy should be generous rather than regulatory, especially if you want to fulfill the city’s ambitions regarding the cooperative movement. It shouldn’t be too complicated, but they are making everything far too complicated and the pace at which lots are issued is far, far too slow. It will never work out this way.