You cannot live in promises and ambitions!

Housing Vision Rotterdam: nice ambitions, too few concrete measures.

This Thursday, the Rotterdam City Council will vote on the new housing vision for the city. We therefore wrote about this vision, and our problems with this plan:

This article was supported by Young Socialists Rijnmond

A tight housing market, problems in student housing, not enough social rent; themes around housing that we see in the news every week and that put pressure on the liveability of our country. National politics deals with these issues, but it is precisely at local level that a difference can be made. That is why the Rotterdam Municipality's Housing Vision will soon be voted on.

The housing vision consists of two parts, the first of which is the course on which Rotterdam wants to sail until 2040. In this ambition, the 10 starting points from the housing agreement are further explored. These are based on four pillars: more and affordable housing, future-proof and vital neighbourhoods, housing for target groups and a better position on the housing market. At first glance, these are fine goals to make Rotterdam a fine and affordable city for everyone. The second part of the vision consists of measures to make these goals a reality over the next five years. These include measures on the percentages of affordable rental housing and the construction of new houses.

We at DWARS Rotterdam-Rijnmond think the problem with the housing vision lies mainly in the second part. Too soft language is used, For instance, the municipality wants to “try” to keep the number of social housing stable and “aim” at 55% when building, and 65% affordable housing from 2026 onwards. We additionally question the municipality's definition of ‘affordability’: Only 1/5th to 1/4th of affordable housing falls under social rent while in principle as many as 60% of Rotterdammers are entitled to social rent! This is really inadequate. Also, the vision is not fully financially covered on a number of different points. Finally, we read nothing about the housing crisis among students, which is certainly also present in Rotterdam, and will become even more acute with the arrival of the TU Delft campus in Zuid, which is not taken into account in this vision.

This is why we as DWARS are calling on the Municipality of Rotterdam to make its beautiful but failing ambitions concrete. Because you can't live in ambitions. We want stronger guidelines to be formulated and recalibrated annually to meet the pillars and goals of the housing agreement. That way we keep a stick to the door. Because everyone agrees that the housing crisis is great. But now is the time for decisiveness. This is simply not enough.