Flex-housing and the advent of the ‘spoedzoeker’ in Dutch housing policy

Flex-housing is a form of (social) rental housing where the dwelling unit, the building location or the inhabitation period are temporary. Flex-housing developed as a potential stop-gap solution in Dutch housing policy, to temper the acute housing shortages in the country and provide accommodation to a set of vulnerable groups of residents. This policy review traces the emergence of flex-housing as a ‘housing hack’ in the Dutch housing policy milieu and outlines the legal changes that enabled its development, including short-term contracts since 2015, a stimulus package aimed at the building sector in 2019, and its promotion to a full-fledged solution in the coalition agreement of 2021. The review further follows the parallel efforts to define the target group for this type of housing, which pieced together ‘demanding and resourceful tenants’ over time under the umbrella of ‘spoedzoeker’ (people in urgent need of housing) and discusses the perpetuating inequity and precarity of flex-housing residents.