Amsterdam: A just housing market? Measuring the 'justness' of Dutch housing market policy

Among international urban scholars and professionals, the City of Amsterdam is often characterized as a competitive global city with a high degree of social justice (Fainstein, 2010). The Dutch housing market is characterized by a high degree of government intervention. Housing policy in the rented sector has traditionally been aimed at affordability which has resulted in a very large stock of social housing (Whitehead & Scanlon, 2007). In the discourse on housing market justness Amsterdamís huge stock of social housing in the core is said to offer substantial social benefits and increasing equity. Meanwhile, there is limited accessibility to social housing and high levels of competitiveness in the owner-occupied sector (Neuteboom & Brounen, 2011). The Dutch housing market in general, and the Amsterdam market in particular might thus not be as just as it often appears to be to urban scholars. Starting from the assumption that a just housing market implies a certain balance between accessible housing stock and competitors for housing in a housing market region, we develop a metric to operationalize the concept of justness. We use this metric to assess the justness of the Amsterdam region and 39 other regions in The Netherlands. The metric is created using two large datasets from the Housing Needs Survey. Based on the waves of 2002 and 2009 we will compare the region of Amsterdam with results from other regions in the Netherlands, where we expect to find more just housing markets. Moreover, due to institutional changes in the period covered by our data we expect justness to decrease over the period surveyed. References in abstract: Fainstein, S. (2010) The Just City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Neuteboom, P. and Brounen, D. (2011) Assessing the Accessibility of the Homeownership Market. Urban Studies, vol. 48 (11), pp. 2231-2248. Scanlon, K., and Whitehead, C. (2007) Social Housing in Europe. In: Whitehead, C. and Scanlon, K. (eds.) (2007) Social Housing in Europe. LSE London.