This article was written by journalist Jurgen Tiekstra. He is the political editor at *Binnenlands Bestuur* and conducts interviews for *De Nieuwe Wereld*. He also wrote the book: The Climate Debate as a Distorted Mirror.

After the fall of the first and only Schoof cabinet, the opposition had free rein. Because GroenLinks-PvdA leader Frans Timmermans heads the largest opposition party, he was allowed to open the parliamentary debate on June 4—and thus launch the attack.“No solutions have been found—not for the housing crisis, not for the nitrogen crisis, and not for public safety,” he denounced.

D66 leader Rob Jetten wholeheartedly echoed his sentiments that day: “In November 2023, more than 10 million Dutch people went to the polls. All 10 million of them wanted solutions— solutions to the housing crisis, to migration, and for better education. Those voters are now left empty-handed.”

Volt leader Laurens Dassen’s lament was the harshest of all: “We’ve been watching eighteen months of complete stagnation. Absolutely nothing has happened. (...) No new homes have been built.”

It could never have happened

There you have it: the oversimplification of political campaigning. One could say to Dassen: during the short year that the Schoof cabinet was in office, nearly 80,000 homes will have been built. Because that’s roughly the pace of construction in recent years. And to Timmermans and Jetten: efforts to address the housing shortage have been underway since at least the Rutte III administration, that is, since 2017. In that cabinet, D66 member Kasja Ollongren was in charge of the housing portfolio. Eliminating the housing shortage takes so much time that Mona Keijzer, as Minister of Housing, could never have solved the housing crisis on her own.

Incidentally, the reason Ollongren, as Minister of the Interior in the Rutte III government, had to ensure that construction took place was that in 2010, the entire Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (VROM) had been dissolved by the then Rutte I coalition government (VVD and CDA, with the support of the PVV). It was the Schoof cabinet, of all governments, that reinstated this defunct department, more than fourteen years later.

Through Line

During the aforementioned parliamentary debate, VVD leader Yesilgoz appeared to acknowledge that many social issues indeed cannot be put off. She submitted a motion, “considering that it is irresponsible to allow a standstill to persist until the next elections,” particularly with regard to housing construction. She called on the cabinet to press ahead on key issues. However, the motion was rejected. D66 voted in favor, but GroenLinks, the PvdA, and Volt, among others, did not.

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