News item | 20-02-2025 | 10:25 AM
With, among other things, updating the residential deals and changing project support for housing associations, Minister Mona Keijzer of Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO) wants to strengthen cooperation between the municipality, province and empire to accelerate the construction of social rental homes. In the residential deals, more concrete how many homes are being built, for whom and where. With the change in project support, corporations with insufficient investment space can get any easier financial support for new construction projects, if mutual solidarity does not offer a solution.
The minister responds to the state of the corporation sector, the annual report of the Housing Corporations Authority (AW). The supervisor states that cooperation between the municipality, province and empire remains crucial to accelerate the construction of social rental homes. The AW sees that the ambitions are high, but the construction of new homes is getting off the ground too slowly. As a result, the shortage of corporation homes is therefore holding on for the time being.
To accelerate local housing, Minister Keijzer also sent the Bill Reinforcement Direction of Volkshuisvesting to the Lower House last week. The division of roles between the various authorities is clearer. The minister also looks together with Aedes (housing associations) and the VNG (municipalities) at new land policy, for example through the preparation of general guidelines for the determination of social land prices. This must prevent long -term negotiations and unnecessary loss of investment space for corporations.
Housing corporations must ensure sufficient homes that are affordable and of good quality in livable neighborhoods. They must be able to continue to fulfill that role well and they cannot do that alone. At the end of 2024, Minister Keijzer made agreements with Aedes and the VNG agreements about the numbers of homes to be built at the end of 2024.
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Affordability and Housing Quality
The AW advises to invest in sufficient construction locations and reasonable land prices for social rental properties. This is the 1st requirement for the desired growth in new construction to 30,000 social rental homes and 5000 middle rental homes per year from 2029. The AW also proposes to continue to view rental policy, rent allowance policy and affordable housing costs in connection and to investigate which positive incentives lead to a better one Relationship between price and quality of a home. This is because the ratio between rent and quality of social rental housing has been disturbed: the rental price no longer always says something about the home quality. This makes investing in further improvement difficult, hinders flow and affects the sense of justice of tenants and home seekers.
The Minister writes that especially changes to the home valuation system (WWS), rent allowance and clarity about sustainability objectives must ensure a good balance between affordability and quality. For example, the revised WWS, which started on July 1, 2024, must help in better appreciation of homes with a higher quality. As a result, rental prices can reach more in accordance with the energetic quality. Homes with good labels, and therefore lower energy costs, have a higher maximum rental price.
There have also been changes to the housing allowance policy that improve purchasing power and simplify the housing allowance. For example, the evener income -related reduction of the housing allowance ensures that for part of the housing allowances the housing allowance decreases less quickly when their income increases.
Finally, the sustainability of the housing stock must ensure more living comfort and lower energy costs through corporations. To the co2-Neutral objective for heating to achieve in 2050, corporations must considerably improve the insulation of their rental homes. A clarifying agreement has also been made about this in the recovered national performance agreements: on average 73 kilowatt hours per square meter (kWh/m, per corporation home is allowed2) Energy is used for heat.
State 2025
The AW looks back annually on the performance of housing associations in the field of, among other things, new construction, affordability and quality of life. In the report, the regulator also issues policy signals and looks ahead to the joint task for the corporation sector.