The social rented sector in the Netherlands has always had a very special status. Unlike many other countries, in the Netherlands this sector has never been regarded as a segment exclusively for low-income households. Consequently, neighbourhoods with large numbers of social rented dwellings have never been areas for low-income households only. Since about 1990, however, the proportion of low-income households in social rented housing has increased, while high-income households can be found more and more in the owner-occupied sector. At least for the 1990s, housing policies can be seen as partially responsible for this change. In this contribution, we argue that new housing policies in the Netherlands will probably have the effect of increasing the share of low-income households in social housing even more. This holds for the policy of urban restructuring, initiated in 1997, as well as for the newest plans of the State Secretary of Housing that were launched in his Housing Memorandum at the end of the year 2000. If the proposed housing policy is implemented in the near future, we doubt whether the status of social housing in the Netherlands will continue to be so different from that of other EU countries.
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