Why the livelihood improves but does not feel that way

The freezing of the social rents that Geert Wilders was so proud of appears to be an increasingly clear gift. A beautifully packaged dead sparrow.

For half a million social tenants, rents will go up on closer inspection. They live in a house of a private landlord. And according to the cabinet, the promised freezing is for this group impracticable. The nocturnal negotiators of the coalition had that for a moment not well thought out. But it is also uncertain for the roughly 2 million social tenants in a house of a corporation whether the rents will be frozen on 1 July. There is a lot Criticism in the Lower House.

And then this week there was also surprisingly comment from an unexpected corner: according to Nibud, the budget institute that always keeps a close eye on the incomes of minima, a rental framework is not really necessary. Despite last year’s historically high rental increase, the housing costs of many social tenants are relatively low At the moment. Why? The incomes increased more. For example, because wages, social assistance benefits and the housing allowance rose.

Moreover, the freezing yields less than you might think. Common exemplary families with which Nibud calculates are left 10 to 12 euros more per month, calculated it For Het Financieele Dagblad. The rent allowance would have partly received the rent increase.

Home seekers pay the price

You can think: for people who don’t have it wide, 10 euros is also included. After all, life becomes more expensive on all fronts.

But if you are dear to existence, Nibud director Arjan Vliegenthart says, the problem is not with social tenants. « I am less worried about people in social rental homes than about people looking for a rental home. They often end up in expensive homes and are financially more vulnerable. »

And precisely those home seekers seem to pay the price of the rental freezing. Corporations, admits BBB residential Minister Mona Keijzercan build fewer homes due to the freezing. After all, they have less income, can therefore borrow less and therefore build less. Hence the broad criticism in the Lower House: without adequate compensation for corporations, the housing shortage increases.

The freezing was therefore a scanty gift at the expense of corporations that worsens the housing shortage. Help that doesn’t help.

You could call this rental freezing exemplary for the policy of this coalition and the Cabinet Schoof. PVV, VVD, NSC and BBB pay a lot of attention to repairing purchasing power, but invest too little in the major problems of the Netherlands, analyzed A delegation of the IMF this week. In solving the nitrogen problem or the full power grid, and: the housing shortage. Short term above the long term.

You can also make such an analysis of the poverty policy: plasters, no robust improvement in livelihood.

At first glance it is going well. Poverty has been the last seven years fell. Despite the high inflation is also at the bottom the purchasing power Improved for many households.

Since 2017, households have been spending less on fixed costs

The livelihood has increased, ABN AMRO concluded This week after a representative study among 340,000 account holders. Since 2017, households have issued a smaller part of their net income on fixed costs. Think of housing costs, health insurance and not directly canceled subscriptions.

The biggest improvement could be seen in people on benefits. This is mainly due to the Rutte IV cabinet. He increased the minimum wage, benefits and allowances and dampened energy costs with temporary help. Please note: for people on benefits, the fixed costs are still relatively high. In the same fourth of them even too high, ABN Amro sees: more than 60 percent of the net income.

Poverty that remains

There are less poor households, but the poverty that remains is deeper, the Central Planning Bureau notes. It is about people in social assistance with high healthcare costs or housing costs, for example because they are sick, cannot get a social rental home or live in a drafty house with high energy costs, says Vliegenthart.

And to work people who run few hours and do not use allowances. « Because they don’t want to or can’t. » Frightened by the allowance affair and the threat of recovery. Or because they don’t find the right pots. « People sometimes have to apply for fifteen schemes with the central government and the municipality. Families in social assistance are soon dependent on half of their income on those kinds of allowances. »

If you know how to find all of them, you have enough income to be financially sure, but are you real? According to Vliegenthart, a lack of grip On life, more than lack of money, the main cause of existence uncertainty.

Financially the livelihood has improved, but it does not feel so because people cannot find a house, or because they depend on a variety of uncertain government pots or flex work. More than a million households are Just above the poverty line And can fall under it again if things get worse.

In that complex income aid and increase minimum wage and social assistance, advised In 2023 the Social Minimum Committee, which was established at the request of NSC founder Pieter Omtzigt. But « this cabinet opts for plasters such as a higher housing allowance and specific regulations such as an OV pass, » says Vliegenthart.

Well all cabinets like to make good decorative with purchasing power help that often suggests less than the political PR suggests. But Omtzigt had sharp criticism of that. Too often applied governments, he noted, to improve the purchasing power of the standard households in the models without broad groups improved – because that is expensive.

Do not hand out plasters, but really make it better. Even now that Omtzigts is a party, it does not happen.

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