Are there enough houses in Drenthe? The provincial government is in the dark about this, although the provincial government has paid more attention to the subject since 2019.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” says Eeldenaar Nico Uppelschoten, member of parliament for the PVV. To his written questions about housing shortage in Drenthe, he frequently received the answer ‘we are not aware of this’. “It was actually clear to me that little is known at the provincial government about these kinds of matters. That is why we will continue to debate this.”
“We really need to know how many homes we lack and what kind of homes are needed now,” Uppelschoten argues. “Because then we can implement policy on that.”
Additional interest
The theme of housing has received extra interest from the provincial government since 2019. Under the leadership of deputy Hans Kuipers, a flying brigade of expert provincial officials was set up to support municipalities in developing housing plans. More money was also put on the table for a subsidy scheme.
Uppelschoten is receiving signals that people in Drenthe are also having difficulty finding a house. “People approach me and say, for example, that their son or daughter cannot get a home. The complaint is often that status holders (refugees with a residence permit, ed.) are given housing.”
That is why he asked the provincial government how many people are registered for social housing and how long they are on the waiting list. Strikingly enough, the province is unable to answer the first question. The waiting period varies from 4 weeks to 7 years, according to the provincial government, depending entirely on what the home seeker wants and in which region he or she wants to live.
Refugees with a residence permit
Uppelschoten also wanted to know how many status holders received social housing in recent years, but this is also unknown to the province. The good news is that the construction of new social housing has increased over the past two years. In 2022, 259 such houses were built, compared to 148 in 2021 and 163 in 2020. 143 social rental homes have already been built in the first quarter of this year.
Coincidentally, a report by researcher Bart Corbijn was published this week. According to him, Drenthe builds far fewer houses than most other provinces, also in proportion to the number of inhabitants. “To be able to compare, we looked at how many houses were built per 100,000 inhabitants per province,” says Corbijn. “In Drenthe this concerns 180 houses, up to and including August this year.” This concerns not only social rentals, but also the private sector and owner-occupied homes. Only Limburg builds fewer houses, according to Corbijn’s research.
Build 13,000 houses
Corbijn only looked at the figures, not an explanation. “Coincidental circumstances can also play a role, for example if an entire neighborhood has just been built,” he says. “We also conducted this research in 2021 and 2022. Last year Drenthe was in the middle bracket, the year before it was the fifth lowest.”
In any case, the targets in Drenthe are lower than elsewhere. At the end of last year, the province and the Drenthe municipalities agreed with Minister Hugo de Jonge (CDA, Public Housing) that 13,000 houses will be added in Drenthe by 2030. The national target is 900,000 houses.
Uppelschoten: “However, it is not clear to me what that number of 13,000 is based on. And it is important to know to what extent it will solve something if we start building this number.”