The Dutch Housing Market: A Moral Economy Perspective
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2025-08-26
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en
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The Dutch housing market is known for its inequalities of which the most pronounced its generational inequality. However, these inequalities did not sway governments from their neoliberal course. Using a two-step approach this paper tests the assumption if the object of study is neoliberal before using a moral economy perspective to assess how narratives and ideals legitimized and normalized neoliberal housing policies. By constructing a case study, based on Dutch housing minister Stef Blok, this paper contributes to the moral economy literature that rarely includes empirics (Sanghera & Satybaldieva, 2020) and provides food for thought for future research. This paper reveals four key points: homeownership is legitimized by using a double standard of fairness compared to social housing tenure; the rhetoric of investment in financial security legitimized financialized housing practices further morphing the sector to favour rentier interests; neoliberal and homeownership ideals put tension on the relationship between government and its society; and the explicit framing of housing in transactional terms further deepened these tensions, as homeownership ideals focussed on financial security crowded out other essential forms of social connection (Bowles, 2016; Polanyi, 2001).
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen