Amsterdam is an example of an open, wealthy city, that takes immigrants from all different places in the world. So what have been the results? Rent prices and costs of housing have gone through the roof. What to do about rising rents? | DW Documentary, DW Documentary, June 11, 2019 The Netherlands has the highest population density of any nation-sized country in Europe (not counting the tiny ones). The excess of people and lack of enough space for everyone who wants to live there has made the housing market very competitive and driven prices up. Young people are finding they cannot afford to move out from their parents. The availability of affordable housing has pretty much disappeared on the open market. Even middle class people are struggling to afford housing and finding they are being priced out of the market. It's not just the city of Amsterdam itself, it's all of the surrounding area. The Netherlands supplies more subsidized housing than any other country in Europe, but there just are not enough for all the people who want them. There are very long wait lists. In the video, someone is quoted as saying that there are many people who earn too much to qualify for subsidized housing but not enough to afford an apartment. I wonder, how long will the Netherlands be able to remain "open and tolerant" ?
It's just the laws of supply and demand.I don't think you can blame the immigrants for it. When society reaches the state where it can't house all their populations, then that's the signal that it's time to leave and find another place to live.
Some people will blame tourism for the housing shortage, so let's look at that. Looking at the numbers and doing some basic math... Here's a graph that shows tourism in the Netherlands has gone up 40% between 2000 and 2014. It's still sort of difficult to imagine tourism can be the main driver in all of this. In 2018, there were 19 million tourists in Amsterdam, and tourists to Amsterdam have an average stay of 4.52 days. sources here: https://www.statista.com/topics/6025/tourism-in-amsterdam/#:~:text=In 2018, approximately 19 million,were British, American and German. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81847372.pdf Amsterdam population in 2018 was 854,047. Adjusting 854,047 x 365 = 311,727,155 19,000,000 x 4.52 = 85,880,000 85,880,000 divided by 311,727,155 = 27.5 percent Means that tourists only represent 27.5 percent the size of the permanent population in the city, on any give day.
examining the statistics to see if there might have been a correlation between immigration levels and housing prices https://www.ucl.ac.uk/dutchstudies/...cultureel_gev_ENG/pages/geschiedenis_imm.html https://www.statista.com/statistics/577251/average-selling-price-of-houses-in-the-netherlands/ Additional housing price statistics stretching back from 1975-2013 https://dobododo.wordpress.com/2013...-near-the-level-of-the-last-top-in-the-1970s/ It seems to me the statistics seem to be consistent with or support the hypothesis. Housing prices really started accelerating around 1996, and that is around the same time immigration levels began accelerating. Of course, it could also very well be possible the causation could be the reverse - higher housing prices might have been the factor that brought in more immigration, as lower-earning Dutch families began to be priced out of Amsterdam by the higher rents, creating a vacuum in the labor market. Since immigrant families often are willing to crowd many people into a small living space and have several income earners per home. And are also generally willing to pay a larger percent of their income towards rent, since the financial situation is still better than the countries where they come from.
Diversity is always good. 10 million more should move there - the more that better. Isn't that the logic? That Los Angeles and New York City need to at least triple their population with immigrants?
