Housing in Amsterdam and the Netherlands: Swinging back from a Market to a Regulatory Approach

Event Details

Date: Thu 15th Feb 2024 

Time: 5:00 pm - 6:00 pm AEDT

Location: Lecture Theater 250, Wilkinson Building 

In trying to understand Australia’s housing problems and potential solutions, we often turn to countries like the Netherlands – famed for its historically strong social sector and rights for renters. This talk, by esteemed housing expert Professor Richard Ronald from the University of Amsterdam, charts the evolution of the Dutch system over several decades of change. The story begins with the establishment of a highly regulated housing sector. In Amsterdam – a rich global city with a higher GDP per capital than Sydney, 68% of households occupied rent controlled or non profit housing association housing in 1995. The second part of the story looks at how this system was transformed in the 2000s/2010s while retaining a large stock of social housing (still around 50% in 2021), and the physical manifestations of this transformation on Amsterdam’s urban fabric.  However, growing unmet housing demand and escalating price pressures have seen a recent swing back to rent controls and social housing. The final chapter of the story looks at the last two years over which time the focus has been on establishing a rent controlled middle segment.

Speaker Bio

Professor Richard Ronald

University of Amsterdam 

Richard Ronald is Professor of Housing and Chair of Political and Economic Geographies at the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands). His research focuses on housing in relation to social, economic, and urban transformations in Europe and Pacific Asia. He is currently Editor of Palgrave Macmillan's 'Contemporary City' book series and Chairs the board of the 'International Journal of Housing Policy' (where he was formerly Editor-in-Chief). 

Richard Ronald was a Doctorate and then Postdoctoral Fellow at Kobe University in Japan in the early 2000s before moving to TU Delft in the Netherlands in 2006 and then the University of Amsterdam in 2010. He has also been Distinguished Professor at Hong Kong Metropolitan University and Guest Professor at the University of Birmingham (UK), National University (Singapore), Kyung Hee University (South Korea), and the University of Adelaide (Australia). His most recent book (2022) is titled 'Families, Housing and Property Wealth in a Neoliberal World'.

This talk is hosted by the University of Sydney's Henry Halloran Research Trust.

Disclaimer: We may take photographs of the speakers and the audience at this event for promotional purposes. Please let us know if you wish not to be photographed.

Image credit: Nicole Gurran