At the De Veense Put holiday park in Veen you will come across everything: caravans on lawn full of weeds, luxury yachts next to bungalows, wooden chalets with peeling paint and large villas with solar panels. It is a place where there is plenty of recreation, but where people also live permanently. And the latter is forbidden. The municipality of Altena now has plans to allow living in the park.
Air, space and tranquility. Residents of the Veense Put get this thanks to the plan of the municipality of Altena, thinks alderman Shah Sheikkariem (spatial plans). “This will be a solution for the vast majority of residents.”
Permanent living on holiday parks is prohibited according to Dutch law. Nevertheless, it is increasingly common due to the housing shortage that a holiday home is used as the main residence. More than 9170 people lived in a Brabant holiday park for most of their time last April, but for fear of checks and fines, many people are not registered there. De Veense Put has almost 80 permanent residents. In total there are 178 landowners, spread over 285 pieces of land.
Outgoing minister Mona Keijzer (public housing and spatial planning) wants to permanent living on holiday parks for the next ten years, in order to partly curb the housing shortage. In December she already called on municipalities to stop enforcement on holiday parks.
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On the holiday park in Veen, permanent living was already overlooked by the former municipality of Aalburg. Of the nearly 80 permanent residents, more than half have a tolerance decision. That means that there is no enforcement action against the residents. “That no longer fits in with today’s ideas,” says Alderman Sheikkariem. “But we must take into account people who have ever been granted rights.”
To make permanent residence possible, a quality improvement of more than 2.7 million euros is required before 2035. The Veense Put is a vulnerable place due to the location outside the dykes. Because such an area can overflow with high tide, the government sharpened the rules around Buitendijks Wonen. The municipality of Altena has requested The Hague to make an exception for the holiday park.
The residents themselves will pay for that quality improvement of the area. “If you now recreate on the Veense Put, but you want to live there permanently, you will have to deal with a value increase in your piece of land,” explains Mayor Egbert Lichtenberg. It is calculated per square meter. The landowners who want to live permanently in the park will soon pay twenty to thirty percent of that increase in value to a fund to uphold the quality of the area.
“That is a lot of money,” says Lenie Verbeek, who represents the interests of residents of the Veense Put. She fears that people who want to live permanently at the holiday park will not be able to cough this up and perhaps be put out of their homes.
A cautious estimate from the municipality shows that a third of all landowners want to live permanently on the Veense Put. That amounts to around fifty landowners. Financing that quality improvement therefore ends up on their shoulders. That soon amounts to 50,000 euros per person, says Verbeek. “Do you have that in the closet?”
“Ultimately, it must be a new neighborhood of Altena.”
According to Mayor Lichtenberg, landowners should be able to pay it easily. According to him, the increase in value of their land contributes to being able to get a mortgage on their former holiday home. “But,” says the chairman of the interest group, “you must get that mortgage first and it must also be paid. In theory it is possible, but in practice it gets stuck.”
If people do not choose to convert their recreation home into a permanent home, the municipality of Altena will check whether they also use their recreational home from April to October for recreation. “Everyone will have to adhere to the rules,” says Lichtenberg. People do not stick to this, then their opportunity on permanent living on the Veense Put is lost. “Ultimately, it must be a new neighborhood of Altena.”
