The Cabinet is looking for large sites for housing construction after 2030

This is what outgoing Minister Hugo de Jonge, responsible for public housing and spatial planning, wrote in a letter to the House of Representatives. How many houses should be built in the mentioned areas is the subject of study. These must be places with capacity for at least 3,000 homes and where construction can occur quickly.

Note space

Research on large-scale sites is part of the development of spatial planning policy. It should see the light of day next year.

The new sites are in addition to 17 areas already earmarked for large-scale housing construction in the most urbanized areas of the Netherlands, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Groningen, Nijmegen, Brabantse Stedenrig. A total of 288,000 homes will be built there by 2030, about 30 percent of the total 981,000 homes that Minister De Jong wants to achieve by 2030.

not enough

In the following years, there will be room for a further 300,000 new homes on these 17 sites. But according to de Jong, this is not nearly enough to meet the housing need.

The outgoing minister points out that there is now a shortage of 400,000 homes and that the population will grow significantly in the coming decades.

According to figures from Statistics Netherlands, the population of the Netherlands will grow from 17.8 million people now to 19.6 or even 20.6 in 2050. If we cannot control immigration, we could reach 22 million people in 2050.

Minister De Jonge writes that his intention is to make the whole of the Netherlands stronger, and so he is choosing sites outside the most urbanized region of the country.