“Lekker Thuis!” — Holland’s Housing Shortage Gets Real

Holland (the Netherlands) is flat, densely populated, and historically brilliant at maximizing usable space. Look at a map of the country. This is a nation shaped like a Slushy? flung out of a cup, its insane borders an artifact of the sheer determination that pulled the place together. About a fifth of the country used to be on the ocean floor, so it’s not as if the Dutch can’t knuckle their way through a challenge. But today's challenge is huge.

Holland's housing crisis is acutely concerning—a puzzle whose solution is being sought in a shrinking range of options. Just to keep pace with the growing Dutch population, Holland needs to build 850,000 new homes by 2030. There are blockers to this goal.

The small country’s beleaguered construction sector is juggling socio-political debate, environmental constraint, a monumental labor shortage, a dwindling buildable footprint, and a Dutch public struggling to reconcile the housing emergency with centuries-old notions of what the Netherlands “is”. These esoteric discussions are increasingly academic as the housing crunch makes the search for "home" a painful and complicating fact of life for many in the Netherlands. Young Dutch people are being particularly—some might say tragically—affected by the shortage.

Driving south from Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, the open expanses do not suggest "density" but a pastoral idyll familiar from 16th century paintings. One is stunned by the sheer ”see for miles” horizontality of Holland, a vast green tabletop sprinkled near and far with disinterested cows, the occasional village steeple, and the unmistakable cloverleaf of a distant windmill. This is a skyline whose timeless “lowlands” character beneath roiling van Gogh clouds is beloved by the Dutch.?

Staring at the countryside through a rain-flecked car window, I'm reminded that the meteorological dynamism of the country is its own familiar wonder, and likely has everything to do with the evolution of Dutch "can-do". Rain clouds roam the wide tableau here and there, buoyant bruise-colored thugs dumping their squalls on the unperturbed Nederlanders, a people who bicycle through storms of near-biblical violence with fixed expressions, soaked to the bone and indomitably pedaling in a mellow middling gear. I've long considered this Dutch cycling posture a sort of raised middle finger to centuries of blustering, bipolar weather.

Housing in the Netherlands is Practical and Emotional

Against this archetypal Dutch milieu, discussions around the housing shortage intermix the practical with the emotional. In every culture surely, "home" has a powerful and inexpressible meaning. To the Dutch, "home" is a place, an emotional nexus, and the gezellig safe harbor in which one can reliably drop anchor and be nourished—in every way—however storm-tossed the seas. In Holland, establishing one's own domicile is a completion. The Netherlands' housing crunch can be viewed, without hyperbole, as a quiet existential disaster. Given the country's size, density (at 1,316 people per square mile the most densely populated country in the EU and one of the mostly densely populated countries in the world), and global role as a major agricultural producer, the current crisis was in its way inevitable.

Since the end of WWII the high-rise in Holland has been a troubled, hotly-debated emblem of the density issue. The quaint Dutch skyline’s connection to national character, the blocking of precious sunlight, and a slew of environmental complications make the sky-scraping apartment tower an early casualty in Dutch density discussions.

Dutch Parliament building — the Binnenhof, in the Hague

Tall modernist buildings in Holland are generally thought to bring an unwanted urban aesthetic, a blight on the Netherlands' historical identity. The post-WWII development of modernist, low-rise urban apartment blocks, notably the Bijlmermeer outside Amsterdam—a built township of some 50,000 people—began as a hopeful complement to Holland's liberal and welcoming immigration policies in the wake of that punishing global conflict. Bijlmermeer drew fire over time as the enormous structured neighborhoods developed their own errant ecosystems and sense of social separation. The housing debate raged on.

Resident children plant trees in hope-filled inauguration of Amsterdam's Bijlmermeer - an early public housing project

Strikingly, in a country whose social safety net is considered second to none, the number of Dutch homeless between the ages of 18 and 30 has in recent years tripled to more than 12,000. The waiting list for a rent-controlled apartment starts at around 7 years. Consider that in Holland about one in three houses is such subsidized social housing. When working youth are living in a subsidized home with their parents, the family's subsidy drops to compensate for the young family member's earnings. This often compels young people to leave home for the economic good of the household, despite having no other home to go to themselves. This is putting added pressure on the housing market.?

What on Earth is a Nitrogen Crisis?

In 2019 came the stikstofcrisis, or nitrogen crisis—throwing fuel on the housing shortage fire. What was the crisis? Holland's nitrogen output had grown to the point it needed to realign with the EU’s nitrogen cleanup efforts. In 2019 the Dutch government imposed sudden environmental regulations whose nitrogen-related rules targeted the Netherlands' most glaring offenders — the agriculture and construction sectors. The sudden clamping down had an immediate effect, slowing construction in the country to a near-standstill. Following a six-year surge in construction, Dutch building output fell by about 8% as 18,000 building projects in the Netherlands were delayed, including critical residential projects.

Nitrogen crisis protestor — "...Use your mind, keep farmers in our country.." Of course it memorably rhymes in the Dutch language..

Tiny Holland is the second largest exporter of produce in the world. All-conquering agricultural innovation is so a part of the historic Dutch character it amounts to a sort of historic European legacy - a "breadbasket" reputation that has forever done the Dutch proud. Now Dutch farmers found themselves regulated, audited, and—most painful of all—branded as environmentally unfriendly agitators; another withering blow to the fertile Netherlands self-image.?A younger, activist Dutch generation is avidly pursuing an environmentalism that is often at odds with the centuries-old primacy of proud Dutch farming, not to mention the need for building homes.

..out-of-work Dutch construction workers gather in protest

The outcry from ag and construction was swift. News-dominating, culturally eye-popping street protests by the newly united farmers and construction workers stunned the general population and caused the shaken Dutch government to roll back some of the more onerous rules in December of that year. But by then the ripple effect had been embedded. Today, well-intended compliance mandates make it about a two year wait—from permitting, to construction, to actual move-in. Terrible news for the aforementioned 2030 housing goal.?

Dutch Construction's Labor Shortage

As construction slowly rebounds in the Netherlands, the resulting flight of workers from the construction industry has resulted in - yes - a labor shortage. A recent economic study revealed that some 20% of Dutch contractors have had to waive desirable projects simply because they didn’t have the labor to perform the work. Rhetorical question: could the burgeoning construction technology revolution conceivably lure young Dutch people back into the construction sector there? One other thing—as of January 1 of this year (2021) every new building in Holland must be energy neutral.

Rotterdam's Cube Houses - photo courtesy Richard Ciraulo

The housing crisis in Holland has long been an issue, but is today a growing emergency. As for the high-rise, the concern that horizontal urban sprawl will whittle away at the ag sector’s usable land means "vertical" is getting a second look. Residential and mixed-use high-rises are being grudgingly reconsidered as space-saving living quarters worthy of discussion. Other space-sparing design ideas have been floated by a famously eccentric and creative community of architects in Holland. But the Netherlands’ longstanding reputation for innovating their way forward—often against stupendous odds—may be sorely tested as public policy, national zelfbeeld, and the needs of a growing population collide.

“Lekker Thuis!”

We’d traveled to Holland to belatedly celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday. We spent an idyllic week with extended Dutch fam at a country farmhouse outside the town of Winterswijk, and drove the three hours back home to my wife’s birthplace in the seaside town of Monster (yes, you read that right).

On entering her house, I heard my mother-in-law sigh loudly for the ten-thousandth time. “Lekker thuis, Jeff!” Loose translation: “How freaking wonderful is it to be home?” There is no Dutch person who won’t exclaim or murmur those words, and with feeling, every time they walk through their front door. Home and gezelligheid are the true beating heart of the Dutch character. May they find a way.

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