For Geert Wilders, ‘housing’ is code for ‘immigration’

 

For Geert Wilders, ‘housing’ is code for ‘immigration’

 

The Dutch firebrand promised to cut waiting lists by freezing out foreigners.

 

THE HOME FRONT

JUNE 20, 2024 4:00 AM CET

BY HANNE COKELAERE

https://www.politico.eu/article/geert-wilders-affordable-social-housing-code-immigration-dutch-far-right/

 

The Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders won last year’s election with a campaign that promised to tackle the country’s housing shortage.

 

Now that his party is about to form a populist-led government, the question is whether the measures his coalition is proposing will solve the problem.

 

The Netherlands has an “acute” housing crisis, according to the United Nations. The country faces a shortage of about 390,000 homes. Existing housing has grown too expensive. In the run-up to the country’s November election, the issue was a top concern.

 

For Wilders, it was also an opportunity to hammer home his favorite issue: immigration.

 

As a part of its election campaign, Wilders’ Freedom Party claimed that the Netherlands’ backlog in house-building “simply cannot match the open-border policy and the huge population growth” and that Dutch people, “who have to spend more and more time on the [social housing] waiting list, are strongly discriminated against.”

 

Competition between immigrants and the native-born is a narrative that has been “eagerly used by a number of parties,” said Mathijs ten Broeke, spokesperson for tenants’ rights group Woonbond. But, he added, it’s a “false contradiction.”

 

“People who’ve been on the social housing waiting list for a long time do indeed compete with asylum seekers who are assigned a house here,” he said. But the problem is the underlying shortage caused by the sale of housing stock under previous governments.

 

While Wilders’ Freedom Party has snagged the migration portfolio in the incoming government, the housing beat looks set to go to Mona Keijzer, the top election candidate for the right-wing populist Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), one of Wilders’ coalition partners.

 

Keijzer  — who served in a previous government as a state secretary for economic affairs until she was fired for criticizing its COVID measures —  tweeted out a “national emergency plan for housing” in January.

 

The Netherlands would have to get rid of “sacred cows” in legislation and quickly designate construction areas, she argued. And, she added, “of course, migration [should go] down drastically.”

 

‘Alternative’ housing facts

In a report earlier this year, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, U.N. special rapporteur on adequate housing, wrote that the Dutch crisis had been two decades in the making. The causes, he said, were structural, including a shortage of adequate land for new housing, the lack of rent caps in the private rental sector and speculation, and large investors in the real estate market.

 

But, he added, an “alternative narrative has emerged” that pins the housing crisis on an “influx of foreigners.”

 

It’s a narrative that struck a chord with voters, with many — including students — citing housing as the reason why they supported Wilders.

 

On a busy square in Rotterdam’s south district, 40-year-old entrepreneur Laminta van Keeren said she had skipped the November vote but supported Wilders’ Freedom Party.

 

As a single mother, she had no choice but to keep living with her ex, Laminta said. Asylum seekers “had all received houses … but I, who’s been living here all my life, can’t get a house with my children,” she complained.

 

Housing vs. migration

The coalition’s broad-strokes deal, presented in May, included a proposed ban on giving asylum seekers preferential treatment on social housing, as well as the allocation of more land for housing and measures to ease permitting procedures.

 

The home builders association WoningBouwersNL said it was “delighted” with Keijzer’s candidacy, arguing that she’s an experienced politician who’s not afraid to make the major changes that are needed to build 1 million more houses by 2030.

 

Ten Broeke said that while new construction is important, the government risks losing sight of other parts of the problem, including affordability and the quality of housing.

 

The risk, he said, is the government will “fundamentally, not change much on housing — other than making less room for migrants and very minor interventions on rent policy.”

 

For many voters that might not matter, said Kristof Jacobs, an associate professor at Radboud University who’s been analyzing Dutch voters.

 

Migration — not housing — is the top concern of Wilders’ Freedom Party supporters.

 

“Suppose, as a government, that you don’t bring down migration, but you do solve the housing crisis,” he said. “Then there’s a very good chance that these voters will be dissatisfied.”

 

This article has been updated.