Netherlands: Who Gets the Short End of the Stick in the Dutch Housing Shortage?

The Netherlands is a tiny country, but with a very high population density. For years, there has been a shortage of housing, and those in need of social housing have to go on a waiting list that can last years. The obvious solution is to build more houses, but European courts, which have jurisdiction over all EU member nations, have ruled that, due to environmental concerns, housing construction in the Netherlands must be limited.

Enter into all this are the hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers, refugees, and assorted migrants  mostly from the Middle East and North Africa, who are flooding the country. They are being housed in asylum centers. The largest asylum center in the country, a former NATO base, is in the small town of Ter Apel, and local residents there are fed up with the crime committed by the mostly young, male “refugees”. Other towns are resisting the government’s plans to build more centers around the country to handle the flow that steadily continues. (Building houses is limited, but more asylum centers? No problem.)

But what happens to that waiting list for social housing? As the Netherlands grants legal resident status to new arrivals (status holders), they go to the head of the list for housing. That means that Dutch families who have been waiting for years for social housing keep getting pushed back on the list.

Now comes a report that there are as many as 4,000 homeless children in the country, homeless because their parents are homeless, in many cases, sleeping in their cars.

The below article from the conservative news site, Dagelijkse Standaard, which describes this sad state of affairs, is translated by Fousesquawk. 

Scandal: Dutch children sleep in cars while status holders get priority for housing everywhere

Domestic   21 April 2026 at 13:30

It is the absolute lowest point in what was once a great and prosperous country. While the party cartel in the Hague squanders billions on asylum reception and places priority on furnished social housing for status holders, thousands of Dutch children are sleeping in autos, damp garages, or on the couches of relatives. Teachers are sounding the alarm over the dire housing shortage among their pupils. It is the cold, hard reality from a decades-long border policy and a government that has abandoned its own citizens.

The harsh reality: Sleeping in a car

The reports coming from the educational sector are flat-out heartbreaking. From new numbers from the Youth Educational Funds, it shows that the schools are sounding the alarm en masse. Last year, there were dozens of requests for emergency assistance for homeless children. We are not talking about an extra math book, rather about fundamental supplies for survival: clothing, blankets, or even an overnight stay in a hotel.

A recent count revealed that there are no less than 4,000 homeless children in the Netherlands. The saddest example? A teacher wanted to give a craft project to a kid to hang up at home. The heartbreaking answer from the child? “I have no wall because we sleep in the car.” It is a national scandal that this happens in our country.

Crocodile tears from the elite left

Naturally, the elite left stand ready to scream murder and fire, this time in the person of Hans Spekman, chairman of the Youth Educational Funds and future FNV (Federation of Dutch Trade Unions) boss. Spekman calls the situation “sickening” and says, “We are failing as a society”.

It is truly the ultimate hypocrisy. It is precisely the political flank of Spekman, (the PvdA-Labour Party-  and the rest of the leftist cloud) that for decades has advocated for unlimited immigration. They have facilitated the asylum tsunami that has brought our entire housing market to a standstill.

For years, their social housing has been given away with urgency to people who have never contributed here for one day, while Dutch residence-seekers have been consigned to the back of a 15-year waiting list. And now, for prominent leftist bigwigs, pretending to be shocked over the disastrous results of their own policy, it is intolerable.

(Our) own people last

The contrast could not be more gruesome. On the one hand, asylum-seeker centers are being built from scratch out of the ground, and status holders and their families who join them are being immediately housed. On the other hand, we see overfull women’s reception shelters, families rotting away in illegal, moldy homes, and Dutch children who have to do their homework in the back seat of a car or in a garage.  

Spekman cynically says: This is happening everywhere in our neatly-manicured country.” No, Mr. Spekman, this is happening in a country that is systematically destroyed by politicians who want to save the world, but who let their own people suffocate.

There must be a radical change of course. The borders must be closed, the priority rules for asylum-seekers must be thrown in the trash, and (housing) must be built for the Dutch. Our children belong in a warm bed, not in the trunk of a car. 

Source: http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2026/04/netherlands-who-gets-short-end-of-stick.html