corporations want to share houses more often

• Borrow Kraniotis

  economics editor

There is a major shortage of housing in the Netherlands, but at the same time many houses are ‘under-occupied’. This is the case if, based on the number of bedrooms, there is room for more people than live there.

European statistical agency Eurostat calculated that the Netherlands has one of the highest percentages of under-occupancy: 61 percent of people live in an under-occupied house. Only in Malta, Cyprus and Ireland do more people live ‘too spacious’.

Private homeowners decide for themselves the number of people in the house. But many corporation homes are also under-occupied. And corporations have the social task of housing people and the waiting lists are long.

But of all 2.1 million social housing units, just over half, 51 percent, are rented to a single household. The Housing Corporation Authority calculated this at the request of the NOS.

And of the social housing that becomes available each year, an even larger proportion is rented to one person, namely 70.5 percent. While many of those houses are also suitable for two or more single people.

“Many of our tenants live in spacious rooms. We see undercrowding much more often than overcrowding,” says the Zaanse corporation Parteon. “The number of rooms is not known for all homes. But of the houses for which it is known, you see that 73 percent of single households live in a home with two or more bedrooms and 40 percent in a home with three or more bedrooms.”

Several corporations have been carefully trying to do something about this lately by renting larger homes to two or more single people. This is called home sharing or closing friends-contracts.

The Nijmegen corporation Talis now rents 40 houses to two singles and plans to add 50 more every year. Ultimately, Talis wants to rent out 2,000 of the 16,000 homes this way. “We have many large single-family homes and renting them to one person is a waste of space,” says a spokesperson.

Ruth and Laure had to wait years for a home and so they decided to share a home:

Talis is converting vacant three-bedroom homes for the project. A bedroom then becomes a second bathroom, so that residents have their own sanitary facilities. They share the living room and kitchen. The homes will be raffled off among interested parties. The winner can find the second resident himself. They may not be partners and must both be registered. They keep their waiting time.

Corporate umbrella organization Aedes sees these types of initiatives increasing. “It is a way to help starters and young people in particular find housing more quickly. There is now more attention to using the existing housing stock more efficiently,” said a spokesperson.

The Hague corporation Staedion now rents 42 homes to two singles and is expanding this further. “We mainly see people in their twenties responding. Often starters with a short registration period. This way you can help more of these people.”

And there are more corporations that focus on home sharing, such as Parteon in Zaanstad, Zayaz in Den Bosch and Salland Wonen in Raalte.

An additional advantage of bringing singles together in corporation housing is that it can save taxpayers money. Because with this type of housing you will in principle not receive any housing allowance. “That is not necessary. The two of them can easily afford that house,” says researcher Frank Dirks of knowledge organization Platform31. “They have more net left over per month than if they only rented the home with the right to housing allowance.”

Dirks did a calculation: “Corporations rent out approximately 125,000 vacant social rental homes to single people every year. Suppose they allocate 15,000 of these to home sharers. That will save 300 million after five years and 600 million per year in rental allowance after ten years.”

“It’s good that corporations are now working on this,” he says. “I think they can do a lot more. Because can you still allocate large homes to singles in this day and age, when there are so many people on a waiting list? You may wonder.”

The Institute for Public Values ​​warns that this form of housing can be a risk if you end up on benefits. Because it is not yet clear how the government views this. If the two tenants are regarded as a joint household, your benefits may be reduced.

According to the institute, home sharers, each with their own rental contract, should therefore not be regarded as a joint household by default.