The unlikely revival of private renting in Amsterdam: Re-regulating a regulated housing market

Abstract

Over the last decade, private rental sectors have been in rapid ascendance across developed societies, especially in economically liberal, English-speaking contexts. The Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, has also more recently experienced the reversal of a century-long decline in private renting. More unusually, the expansion of private renting in Amsterdam has been explicitly promoted by the municipal and national government, and in cooperation with social housing providers, in response to decreasing accessibility to, and affordability of, social rental and owner-occupied housing. This paper explores how and why this state-initiated revival has come about, highlighting how new growth in rent-liberalized private renting is a partial outcome of the restructuring of the urban housing market around owner occupation since the 1990s. More critically, our analysis asserts that restructuring of Amsterdam’s housing stock can be conceptualized as regulated marketization. Market forces are not being simply unleashed, but given more leeway in some regards and matched by new regulations. We also demonstrate various tensions present in this process of regulated marketization; between national and local politics, between existing housing and new construction, and between policies implemented in different time periods.