So is the largest contributor to the problem just lack of land? Seems like most of the other problems from the article can be solved with money, but a lack of land makes it hard to build anything
map of land usage in the netherlands
See those red dots? Thats where people live. See the vast vast light green background? Thats agrictulture.
More land can be “created” just by building taller.
Nope, our spoil isn’t dense enough for it. We cannot build higher then what you see in Rotterdam, because the building would just fall over
It doesn’t help, but there are a few factors that are more limiting right now. Labour shortage is one, as are nitrogen emissions. A lot of developers also find the current building costs too high.
There are plenty of plots that can be built on, with all of the paperwork good to go.
Literally importing cheap labor quicker than they can build
Nah, the big problem is that houses are too pricey for people to afford. The combination of a load of (international) students, the war in Ukraine, the last 13 years of government focusing on rich corporations made it so many young adults can not afford to buy or even rent their own place. If money was not an issue, I guarantee this would’ve not been as big a problem.
High demand meabs prices go up. Literally economics 101.
Except low demand doesn’t usually make house prices go down either, it just means they won’t get sold or they only get bought by investors - that then also would rather keep them empty than to reduce the price and take a loss, as an empty 1 million house is still worth that 1 million on paper.
I mean, over here in Europe there’s plenty of solutions used by countries (even NL itself) to keep prices for housing down. Things like subsidies, quota for cheap housing, rent allowance, etc. Fact is the last government didn’t give a shit about 50% of incomes, so they didn’t put more in place to encourage and enforce that.
