Rental sector liberalization and the housing outcomes for young urban adults

Amber Howard; Cody Hochstenbach; Richard Ronald

doi:10.1080/02723638.2023.2279873

Rental sector liberalization and the housing outcomes for young urban adults

Urban Geogr. 2023 Dec 8;45(7):1173-1194. doi: 10.1080/02723638.2023.2279873. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Amber Howard^{1

2}, Cody Hochstenbach¹, Richard Ronald^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
² The Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
³ Australian Centre for Housing Research, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.

Abstract

Young adults increasingly rely on precarious and costly rental housing, particularly in major cities and liberalized housing markets. Amsterdam has a more regulated housing system, but increasing market-liberal logic in policy-making has led to considerable loosening of rent regulations in the last decade. One outcome has been the significant growth, and transformation, of liberalized rental housing. Drawing on city of Amsterdam survey data from 2005 to 2019, our analysis considers how recent policy and housing market shifts have generated and shaped housing inequalities for young adults. Where private rental growth was stimulated to fill the middle segment, our findings reveal that it has largely catered to affluent young adults. Households with less resources struggle to gain access, and pay more when they do. Our findings demonstrate that this variation of 'generation rent" is not simply an outcome of market-liberal agendas, but is also shaped on a city-scale, partly through rental market restructuring.

Keywords: Housing; inequality; young adults.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council, under grant number DP190101188. This grant was awarded to the project “Closing the housing gap: A spotlight on intergenerational inequalities”. It was also supported by the VENI grant from NWO, the Dutch Research Council, under grant number VI. Veni.191S.014. This grant was awarded to Cody Hochstenbach for his project “Investing in inequality: how the increase in private housing investors shapes social divides”.