Housing shortage estimate (woningtekort)

Known criticisms of this statistic

Every statistic embodies method choices, and the substantive critiques of those choices are part of understanding the number. These are documented positions — each linked to who makes it. Listing a criticism is not endorsing it; we take no side.

• The calculated shortage is highly sensitive to its assumptions — from what age people are assumed to want their own home, to what share of vacant dwellings counts as available — and for many of those assumptions factual data are lacking. Presenting it as one absolute number gives it more certainty than it has.

  — Algemene Rekenkamer (Netherlands Court of Audit), 2022 · Aanpak woningtekort

• The model's own builders showed that moving the 25-year age threshold for counting housing-sharers by a single year shifts the national shortage by 20,000–28,000 dwellings, and that latent demand — young adults still living with their parents who would move if housing existed — is not counted at all.

  — ABF Research (the model's builders), evaluation for the ministry, 2024 · Evaluatie woningtekort

• The shortage is derived from how households currently live — but how they live is itself shaped by scarcity, and because the model contains no prices it cannot say how much building would restore affordability.

  — Stefan Groot (economist), in ESB, 2022 · ESB: Gemeten woningtekort zegt weinig over werkelijke woningschaarste

Source & method

Raw snapshot (JSON) · every observation keeps its retrieval timestamp and revision history in the public database.