After five years, a long-awaited new construction project for starter and senior housing in the center of Eext is finally getting underway. To the delight of the residents, because new houses are desperately needed. Although there are also critical voices about the plan.
Only a single seat is unoccupied in the large hall at the back of Café Homan. The municipality of Aa en Hunze is visiting Eext to share the first results of a survey into housing needs. And the interest is great.
Eext has been crying out for new houses for some time, especially for the youth from the village. Affordable owner-occupied homes are scarce and competition from the rest of the province for social housing is fierce.
“Many young people who grew up here want to continue living here in the future,” says Roel Heuker, board member of the local village association. “They are now almost forced to look outside the village, because there is just almost no offer here.”
The story of Eext is not new in Drenthe, or even in Aa and Hunze. Several villages face the same problem: there are too few opportunities for the elderly and young to find a suitable home.
In Aa and Hunze, therefore, six hundred new houses must be added between now and 2030, according to the draft version of the housing needs survey. An ambitious plan, the municipality also acknowledges. The municipality will partly determine where these houses should be located by means of village discussions. The first of which takes place in Eext.