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2 “No one chooses such a position themselves. And I think you cannot judge someone, a homeless person or an addict. It is not like they were very happy and deliberately chose their situation. But I do worry whether they are sufficiently supported.”

Andrea, rental employee in Amsterdam

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Adapting to diversity

An ethnographic study on empathy and vulnerability in public housing in Amsterdam

Master thesis Amsterdam, August 2020

Cultural and Social Anthropology specialisation Applied Anthropology

Pam Ackermans Student number: 12768464 E-mail address: pam.ackermans1@uva.nl

Supervisor: dr. Laurens Bakker Second reader: dr. Peter van Rooden

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a few people that have helped me during the process of writing this thesis. Firstly, thanks to everyone that contributed to this research by teaching me about the public housing sector and taking me along with them. Special thanks go out to the employees who let me interview them as well; this provided me with very valuable additional information.

Secondly, thank you to both my supervisors at the University of Amsterdam for their continuous guidance and support. Olga Sooudi, who has helped me tremendously in the research design and fieldwork phases up to her maternity leave, has been there for me during countless changes of research subject, and has calmed me down during a meeting in her office more often than I am comfortable admitting. And Laurens Bakker, who became my supervisor after the fieldwork phase, and whom I, because of coronavirus, only met in person for the first time after handing in the draft version of this thesis. Thank you both for the guidance, wisdom and support!

Very importantly, I would like to thank the people at RIGO, and Rosalie Post in particular. Thank you for explaining everything about this (to me) new field, for the feedback and for the valuable opportunity of doing applied research for RIGO.

Denise, thank you for being able to share research opportunities and fieldwork frustrations. Jip, thank you for proofreading the report and for the valuable tips.

Lastly, I would like to thank all of my friends and family. Some special thanks go out to Yasser and Bart, who have read first versions and excerpts of the thesis whilst writing their own master theses as well. Bart, thank you as well for creating the title page, everyone needs a personal graphic designer in their life. Furthermore, I would like to thank Jara, whom I spent many hours with, writing together in coffee shops. Finally, Ruben, thank you for putting up with me and for the emotional support and love.

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Abstract

This study, carried out in collaboration with research bureau RIGO, looks at how housing association employees deal with the diversity in the public housing sector in the context of the ongoing housing crisis in Amsterdam. Through participant observation and qualitative interviews, data was gathered at three housing associations in the region. Both issues surrounding the diversity and vulnerability of tenants and the housing shortage in the region have their impact on the employees. Housing shortage and diversity issues correlate; where the housing crisis intensifies, it becomes increasingly difficult to take every individual tenant’s needs into account. Cultural diversity has its impact on neighbourhoods with a lot of public housing, where large differences sometimes seem to be a threat to social cohesion. Yet more emphasis is on the special groups in public housing; from those who just exited a care institution to recent refugees or people with mental health problems. All of these groups require special care and whilst helping them gives the employees a sense of fulfilment, these dynamics also make their job one that requires emotional labour and a large empathic ability. The notion of empathy connects to the tensions between the tasks of the employees, the expectations from their employer and clients, and the mechanisms through which they deal with their daily work realities. Although employees may feel like they are operating between tight parameters, their possibilities for divergence and agency, fitting in with the role of a street-level bureaucrat, should not be ignored: in small, seemingly insignificant ways, they take up space for improvisation.

Keywords: public housing, social housing, housing shortage, diversity, empathy, emotional labour, street-level bureaucracy

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Table of contents

Acknowledgements ...4 Abstract ...5 Table of contents ...6 1. Introduction ...7 1.1. Theoretical framework ... 10 1.2. Methodology ... 17

2. Contextual framework – public housing in Amsterdam ... 21

3. Navigating diversity and housing shortage ... 26

3.1. Housing shortage in the Amsterdam region ... 26

3.2. “I would not leave myself, either” ... 27

3.3. Gentrification ... 29

3.4. Fairness and frustration ... 31

3.5. Urgency ... 33

3.6. Central policy vis-à-vis local needs ... 34

3.7. Vulnerability and liveability ... 35

3.8. Everyday dilemmas around cultural diversity ... 38

3.9. Deprived neighbourhoods... 40

3.10. Concluding remarks ... 43

4. Empathy work and emotional labour ... 44

4.1. Social chameleons ... 44

4.2. “You will never make it in this job without keeping distance” ... 45

4.3. Vulnerability, loneliness and care work ... 47

4.4. Emotional labour ... 48

4.5. Work pressure and care work ... 50

4.6. Dealing with emotional labour: coping mechanisms ... 52

4.7. Street-level bureaucracy ... 54

4.8. Concluding remarks ... 56

5. Discussion and conclusion ... 57

Appendix 1: Applied research report ... 62

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1. Introduction

“You see, I think the basic task of a public housing association1 is to facilitate sufficient living space for the people that need a helping hand. (…) Whether that is special target groups such as people who come from the Salvation Army or refugees or just, you know, a nurse who just doesn’t earn eighty thousand a year so she cannot buy anything. (…) So just the people who cannot make it on their own but who do want it.”2

In this anthropological study of public housing in the Amsterdam region in the Netherlands, I look at diversity and housing shortage in the public housing sector and ask what these limitations mean to housing association employees. What are the problems according to housing association employees and how do they suggest that those can be solved? Furthermore, I look at in what the nature of their work influences how employees look at their job. As described in the quote above, housing association employees feel responsibility, but they also experience difficulties.

This research was commissioned by and carried out in cooperation with RIGO, an Amsterdam-based research institute focussing on housing policy and the liveability of environments, in order to connect the academic and applied worlds to each other. A concise research report was added as an appendix to this thesis in order to achieve that goal.

Relevance

In recent years, there has been a growing number of articles written on what is going wrong in the housing sector in the Netherlands.3 For instance, there has been a lot of attention for discrimination in the private housing sector. Furthermore, the growing housing shortage has sparked the attention of policymakers, politicians and journalists alike. Most research that has been done on housing in the Netherlands has been done using quantitative methods, and researchers have mostly looked at the private housing sector in the past. Thus, the aim of this research is to fill this gap and offer an inside view of the public housing sector using qualitative methods. Having taken on a (for anthropologists common) dual role of outsider as well as

1 In this thesis, ‘public housing’ is used to describe the semi-privatised form of housing that is subsidised by the government

(sociale huur in Dutch). Although ‘social housing’ would perhaps be a more fitting translation, in academic literature the term ‘public housing’ is more common. Thus, I chose to employ the term ‘public housing’ throughout this thesis.

2 Interview Andrea, 10 March 2020

3 For instance: ‘Onderzoeksrapport: Discriminatie op de Utrechtse woningmarkt’ by Gielkens and Wegkamp (2019) or

‘Discriminatie op de Amsterdamse woningmarkt: Praktijktesten in de particuliere huursector’ by Kromhout et al. (RIGO, 2020).

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8 insider, I hope to be able to reflect on what my informants have told me about the situation within the public housing sector.

The original research question that I, in accordance with guidelines from RIGO, came up with, was as follows:

How do housing association employees in the public housing sector in the Amsterdam region navigate ethnic and cultural diversity in public housing tenants and how does that impact them themselves?

With this question, I wanted to look at the patterns that arise in public housing due to national and municipal policy with regards to diversity. Would there, for instance, be unconscious bias on the public housing market, as there has been proven to be on the private housing market as well?4 In practice, over the course of the research period, it proved to be impossible to properly research this. However, a lot of data that I collected pointed in the direction of the position of housing association employees, which is why I eventually ended up with the following research question:

How do the diversity and housing shortage in the public housing sector in the Amsterdam region impact housing association employees in their job and how do they deal with this?

In the context of the current housing shortage in the Amsterdam region, it is becoming more and more difficult to serve everyone’s needs, including the needs of vulnerable populations. The goal of the public housing sector has shifted more and more towards helping vulnerable groups in society, which includes not only low incomes but also for instance recent refugees or people that are moving out of health facilities. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to match that goal with the original goal of providing low-cost housing because of the housing shortage in the Amsterdam region. This has a negative impact on the social cohesion in neighbourhoods, which in turn creates more problems and nuisance. It also influences the pressure on housing association employees and how they view their work, because they come in direct contact with tenants and thus are obliged to do the emotional labour that is necessary when dealing with vulnerable populations. Therefore, I will conclude that housing associations

4 Again, see: ‘Onderzoeksrapport: Discriminatie op de Utrechtse woningmarkt’ by Gielkens and Wegkamp (2019) or

‘Discriminatie op de Amsterdamse woningmarkt: Praktijktesten in de particuliere huursector’ by Kromhout et al. (RIGO, 2020).

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9 need to have more attention for diversity and how it is dealt with, especially to alleviate the pressure on their employees.

This thesis consists of two empirical chapters, through which I will work towards an answer to the research question. In the first chapter, the current situation in the public housing sector in Amsterdam will be discussed. Here, diversity issues and the housing crisis will be discussed together as factors that make it more difficult for the housing association employees to carry out their tasks. In the second chapter, the results of this situation will be discussed, zooming in on personal experiences of the employees.

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1.1. Theoretical framework

Built environment and the construction of meaning

McCann (2002) writes that the built environment of the city is constitutive of the meanings and power relations that develop within this landscape. Thus, people construct meaning though their built environment, which has great symbolic importance. Space, in this analysis, is both a reflection of political, social and economic processes and conditions as well as the site through which citizenship is articulated and struggled over (McCann 2002: 77). The city is not just ‘there’, but it is constructed through social processes and in turn, it also influences its inhabitants. This makes ‘the urban’ more of a process rather than a reified fixity (Low 1996: 384). In this study I will employ this lens and look at the city as a work-in-progress, which is constantly being changed.

An important part of this ‘built environment’ is comprised of housing, which is “subject to specific indigenous practices that are fundamentally shaped by cultural meanings attached to dwellings as well as social and family practices related to homes and property” (Ronald 2011: 416). As such, anthropology can be a particularly useful discipline for the study of housing. The development of a tradition of ethnography in housing studies can be connected to the advances in urban anthropology; the two fields have had a great influence on each other (ibid.: 418).

In the context of housing shortage, such as the situation in the Amsterdam region, the question of who gets to occupy space in the city becomes increasingly relevant. This question can be connected to Lefebvre’s (1996) ‘right to the city’. In Lefebvre’s work, the city is seen as “a work of art constantly being remade by its citizens” (Butler 2012: 143). This thus connects to Low’s (1996) ideas of the city as a ‘process’. However, some groups or individuals, according to Butler, cannot fully participate in the process of city-building, which denies them their right to the city (Butler 2012: 143) This exclusion, in Lefebvre’s work, also is seen to exclude these people from civilisation as a whole and leads to segregation and even to the formation of ghettos (ibid.). To Lefebvre, there is tension between use value and exchange value in the inhabitance of space. The privatisation of space reinforces its exchange value and undermines its use value, therefore also undermining the potential of citizens to produce the city together (Butler 2012: 145). Especially when connected to public housing, which primarily serves the people in the lower societal classes, it is relevant to connect this to the concept of class. Of course, an entire theoretical framework could be composed on this alone. Bourdieu, who has been celebrated by many as the most influential class theorist of the late twentieth

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11 century, bases his discussions of class around the concept of habitus, an “array of inherited dispositions that condition bodily movement, tastes and judgement according to class position” (Bourdieu 1984). Habitus is about the “structuring structures that make sure that classes are reproduced over time” (Bridge 2000: 205). It produces patterns of behaviour, which in turn reproduce social agents in the position they currently occupy (Riley 2017). Bourdieu’s ideas about habitus do not attribute much importance to the human agent and look for explanations of class largely in structural forces, thus having a passive view of human agency (Bridge 2000).

Diversity

Like Low and Lefebvre, Jaffe and De Koning (2015: 25) argue that places are not just ‘there’, but that they are constructed, through several discursive and sensory processes. This place-making is often a source of contestation. Jaffe and De Koning take the example of neighbourhoods segregated by class, ethnicity or religion, to show that “place-making can take on an exclusionary form” (ibid.: 27). Furthermore, Sennett (1996) writes that the hegemonically accepted ideal of the city is one of order; there is no place for disorder or anarchy. The Dutch government will try and strive for the creation of social order in its cities, especially in neighbourhoods where the state appears to have lost its grip on social life (Dikec 2006, in Uitermark et al. 2007).

‘Diversity’, as I will show later, is seen as one of the complicating factors in the public housing sector. Questions arise about the meaning of this concept. In policy reports, authors often mean different ethnicities or cultures when they write about ‘diversity’. When there is more diversity in a certain neighbourhood, this is then often linked to less social cohesion and to more overall difficulty in living together (Leidelmeijer et al. 2018). For instance, the report states that there is, on average, more nuisance in an area with a lot of diversity (ibid.). The percentage of people with a migration background is slightly higher in public housing than it is in the rest of the housing in the Netherlands (ibid.), and as such there is more cultural diversity. Thus, these issues are more prominent in neighbourhoods with a lot of public housing than in others. In this research, I look at diversity not only in the ethnic/cultural sense, but I use it in a hybrid sense that encompasses the multiplicity in the public housing sector. An important group in public housing, for instance, consists of people with vulnerable socio-economic or otherwise vulnerable positions. Together with the aforementioned cultural diversity, this can create problems with social cohesion. In the empirical chapters, I will elaborate on these issues more extensively. Within the scope of this theoretical framework, however, it is important to

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12 remember that ‘diversity’ can have many definitions. This research, however, is primarily concerned with how the housing association employees define it, to contribute to an understanding of the practicalities of diversity policy.

Allocation

To understand the public housing system as the context for this research, the access procedures and systems should be discussed. In the context of the public housing system, the term

allocation is commonly used to describe “the set of eligibility and allocation rules which

determine who has access to social housing, who gets which dwelling, and who is at the top of the priority list” (Kromhout and Van Ham 2012: 384).

Allocation criteria can be divided into four main categories: eligibility criteria, selection criteria, ranking criteria, and priority criteria. Firstly, eligibility is comprised of the criteria that are used to define who has access to public housing (ibid.: 385). Secondly, selection criteria are used to define “which applicants are entitled to which dwellings” (Kromhout and Van Ham 2012: 385). These can, for instance, be age or income restrictions, or a specific geographic region where an applicant should reside. Thirdly, there are ranking criteria, which are used to decide who gets which dwelling first. Registration time (inschrijfduur) is the ranking criterium that is used most often (Kromhout and Van Ham 2012). Lastly, ranking criteria are often used together with priority criteria, which can be used to give some potential tenants faster access to new dwellings. Through the use of priority criteria, the public housing system can function as a safety net for those who need it urgently.

Social cohesion and inclusion

Forrest and Kearns (2001) show that social cohesion has been declining in recent times. In policy documents, it is argued that neighbourhoods with a lot of public housing often especially show a lack of social cohesion, which results in a variety of problems. It is important to take this into account, because the problems in weak neighbourhoods with a lack of social cohesion directly influence the daily work realities of housing association employees. I will explore this later in the empirical chapters, where the reasons for these problems and how they work out in practice will be discussed.

‘Social cohesion’, like diversity, is often left undefined, both in academic literature and in policy documents (Van Kempen and Bolt 2009). It is often used as a concept that speaks for itself and does not require much explanation. As such, this conceptual obscurity can be seen as one of the pitfalls of any research that takes social cohesion into account. However, here a conceptual framework will be woven together using several definitions. Firstly, social cohesion

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13 is said to consist of shared norms and values, solidarity, social control and a feeling of belonging to each other and to a specific place. It cannot be seen as a single concept, as Friedkin (2004: 40) argues, but rather is a “domain of causally interrelated phenomena.” Van Kempen and Bolt (2009: 458) describe social cohesion as “the glue holding society together.” Furthermore, it can help increase liveability and increase the tolerance between groups that is often lacking in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods with residents from many different socioeconomic backgrounds (Dekker and Bolt 2005). This shows that social cohesion is seen as vital for the liveability in cities. Next, I will explore what that entails exactly.

Forrest and Kearns (2001) describe five domains of social cohesion: common values and a civic culture, social order and social control, social solidarity and reductions in wealth disparities, social networks and social capital, and place attachment and identity (Forrest and Kearns 2001: 2129). In policy documents, a lack of social cohesion is often connected to the presence of large diversity between residents of a certain area. Higher heterogeneity is then associated with a lower level of trust towards fellow residents and is thought to impact the size of social networks negatively (Putnam 2007, in Van Kempen and Bolt 2009: 461). This can create a situation in which parallel lives in a small geographic area never seem to touch (Van Kempen and Bolt 2009: 459). In this study, I view a socially cohesive area as a place where inhabitants live together in considerable harmony, without causing nuisance to others.

Urban liveability and deprived neighbourhoods

Early 2020, Aedes, the overarching association for housing associations in the Netherlands, wrote that the return of real deprived neighbourhoods (achterstandswijken) is closer than ever before.5 Weak neighbourhoods, as they write on their website, have only become weaker in the

past years. Later, I will show that the problems in these areas, which include large amounts of public housing, are growing. As such, they have their impact on the people who go to work there.

In deprived neighbourhoods, the lack of social cohesion and the presence of other social problems is seen as alarming. Van Kempen and Bolt (2009) write that urban policy in the Netherlands has, since the second World War, largely been aimed at the improvement of these disadvantaged urban districts. These areas made for a spatial concentration of low-income and otherwise disadvantaged households. This concentration has been viewed as problematic since

5 Aedes, Aedes: ’Achterstandswijken’ terug in Nederland? February 3, 2020.

https://www.aedes.nl/artikelen/klant-en-wonen/wijkaanpak-en-leefbaarheid/leefbaarheid/aedes-achterstandswijken-terug-in-nederland.html. Accessed on 14 June 2020.

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14 that time, and multiple possible solutions have passed. Especially the social mix or social cohesion framework has been deemed important in the past few decades. With this model, it is assumed that mixed neighbourhoods (in the sense of variety different income levels as well as different ethnicities and education levels) are beneficial for social cohesion. The assumption has thus been that there is a positive relationship between physical measures (the creation of socially mixed neighbourhoods) and social effects (more social cohesion). However, Van Kempen and Bolt (2009: 460) note that these documents often do not have sound empirical backup. The authors thus argue that mixed neighbourhoods are not the answer to problems with social cohesion, because different groups of tenants (for instance: homeowners and public housing tenants) have different activity patterns and as such they do not interact much.

Gentrification

In the past decades, Dutch governments and housing associations have actively pursued gentrification projects in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the larger cities (Uitermark et al. 2007). Gentrification can be defined as encompassing all processes that are related to the “production of space for and consumption by a more affluent and very different incoming population” (Slater et al. 2004). This new population should then be of a higher socio-economic status than the previous users, together with a change in built environment through a reinvestment in fixed capital. Gentrification projects are aimed at improving the liveability of specific neighbourhoods as well as improving their economic appeal (ibid.). For housing associations, Uitermark et al. write, liveability entails that neighbourhoods are ‘orderly’. This means that there are low levels of crime, vandalism, and nuisance, and that there is a certain social order in vulnerable neighbourhoods. Often, this is done by attracting more middle-class households to the neighbourhoods. It does not necessarily mean that the government tries to improve social conditions of the groups already living in the neighbourhoods (Uitermark et al. 2007). More on this will follow in the second empirical chapter.

Fernández Arrigoitia (2019, in Lees and Phillips (eds): 262) explores public housing both as an object of gentrification and a key instrument for it. I agree with her that the discussion of gentrification often lacks an understanding of the lived experience of public housing tenants, which is clearly something that more research should be done on. The gentrification debate, however, is worth an entire thesis (or book) of its own. As such, here I will only keep it in mind as the context in which processes around public housing are taking place.

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Empathy and emotional labour

As will be addressed later, the work that housing association employees do requires a lot of their emotional and empathic abilities. As such, in this section of the theoretical framework, empathy and emotional labour will be discussed.

Empathy is difficult to define. In anthropological literature, the concept is often either left undefined or used to reflect the relationship between the anthropologist and the people they do research on. However, here, the concept is used not to assess the relationship between anthropologist and the ‘subject,’ but rather to look at the relationship between several actors in the field. The use of empathy is deemed important by informants in the housing association where this research was carried out. I will thus use their personal definitions and understandings of the subject in the empirical chapters.

As will become clear in the empirical chapters, the work with a diversity of (potential) tenants and the high pressure on the housing market can cause for quite a strain on housing association employees. They noted that this can be seen as a kind of emotional labour. In the literature on emotional labour, Hochschild’s influential work The Managed Heart (1979) is often cited. Hochschild argues that in any job that includes interaction with customers, the employees need to manage their own feelings to make sure that the displayed emotion is appropriate for the particular setting. She defines emotional labour as the process by which workers are expected to manage their personal feelings in accordance with employer-defined rules and guidelines. It means that personal feelings are constantly contained and managed to make sure they fit in a particular setting (Hochschild 1979). Hochschild argues that our emotions reveal our underlying attitudes towards others, which might clash with what we have been taught about what kind of feelings are appropriate for a certain setting. This, she argues, leads to a disconnect between how we feel and how we know we should feel (Hochschild 1979). According to Hochschild, emotions are not only shaped by broad cultural and societal norms, but they are also regulated by employers (Wharton 2009: 148). Emotional labour, according to Hochschild, is where the management of personal emotions moves into the public realm. Wharton argues that all jobs where an employee needs to interact with people require some sort of emotion management, also called affective requirements (Wharton 2009: 157). These concepts have mainly been researched in the past with the use of surveys, but here I have used qualitative interviews because these give more room for an individual’s personal feelings and experiences.

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Street-level bureaucracy

A useful concept to develop an understanding of the situation of housing association employees is ‘street-level bureaucracy’. Lipsky ([1980]2010) defines street level bureaucracies as “agencies whose workers interact with and have wide discretion over the dispensation of benefits or the allocation of public sanctions” (Lipsky [1980]2010: xi). These street-level bureaucracies are the places where citizens are in direct contact with government agencies and where they thus directly experience it. Lipsky writes that ‘the exercise of discretion’ is an important aspect of the work of street-level bureaucrats. Discretion refers to the ability to make decisions that, taken all together, can shape public policy. However, these jobs, according to Lipsky, cannot be carried out according to the highest standards of decision-making because street-level bureaucrats often do not have the resources that are necessary to respond properly to individual cases (ibid.).

Lipsky ([1980]2010) also argues that, to make sense of and deal with their jobs, street-level bureaucrats develop routines of practice and often psychologically simplify their clientele and their environment. On the one hand, this can simply be seen as a coping mechanism, but on the other hand. in the case of street-level bureaucrats, it also influences the outcomes of their work because they are in close contact with clients (ibid.). Crocker (2019) writes about the daily efforts of workers in the service sector to “endure organisational structure” (Crocker 2019: 42). Individuals, she writes, are able to perform small strategies of resistance within structures. These coping mechanisms, as I will call them, will be discussed in the second empirical chapter. Lastly, there is an interesting paradox in the work of street-level bureaucrats. On the one hand, their work is highly scripted. This is necessary to achieve policy objectives which are created in the political sphere (by the government). On the other hand, however, Lipsky writes that street-level bureaucrats do work that requires improvisation and responsiveness to individual cases (Lipsky ([1980]2010). This tension will be discussed later.

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1.2. Methodology

Research methods

In this research, qualitative research methods are used, which make it possible to generate an extensive body of knowledge on the housing problem in Amsterdam and obtain in-depth data. These methods enable participants to bring up their own thoughts and ideas (Boeije 2010). This helps to keep an open mind and fits in an inductive data collection method. Inductive methods make it possible to look at what the collected data show, rather than starting the research with a hypothesis in mind. It also keeps the research more flexible; it was the primary reason why I was able to change direction when the data I was collecting pointed in another direction than what was planned originally. Next, I will discuss the specific methods that were used over the course of the research period.

Participant observation

Participant observation is the overarching research strategy that forms the basis of the other methods. Using participant observation allows to get an inside perspective of people’s experiences in a lived world (Boeije 2010: 59). For this research, this implies that I immersed myself in the variety of activities throughout the world of public housing in the Amsterdam region, such as viewings, allocation in the office, and the tasks of a rental employee. I kept to the perspective of the housing associations and their staff because of accessibility issues; it turned out not to be possible to look at the perspective of tenants.

Participant observation firstly served as the way to get to know the public housing system. A particularly important skill within this method is ‘hanging out’: actively being present at events and other social occasions and observing what is going on. By continually being present, I built up rapport with people within the housing associations, which provided me with opportunities to ask them for additional interviews. During the activities, I firstly wrote down observations and findings in jot notes, expressed in key words, and later expanded these into proper field notes

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Qualitative interviews

The data gathered through participant observation were supplemented with various types of interviews. Small talk or informal interviews played a particularly important. These conversations took place whilst hanging out at viewings of new apartments, in the car with rental employees, or in the office. In these kinds of conversations, the researcher only moderately steers the conversation, thus having limited control over the course of the conversation (DeWalt and DeWalt 2011: 139). The positive side to these is that they were not intrusive to the employees’ work. The downside was that taking notes during these conversations was difficult, as they were informal and thus the employees did not expect me to be writing. I thus memorised as much as possible and wrote that down later. Furthermore, a semi-structured interview format with a topic list was used for six qualitative interviews. The use of open-ended questions left enough space for participants to address the topics they considered to be most important.

Policy review

As the research period was cut short because of the coronavirus pandemic, more data than originally anticipated had to come from literature and policy documents. I mainly looked for policy documents and reports on the topics of diversity, social cohesion and housing shortage, as these were the topics that were addressed most in interviews. Findings from these policy documents then were incorporated into empirical chapters and the theoretical framework.

Data analysis

In this research, a lot of textual data was produced in the form of field notes and interview transcriptions. These were processed as soon as possible after gathering the data. These data were stored on a personal laptop which was secured with a password, to ensure confidentiality. Furthermore, the data were anonymised before analysis, to make sure that the anonymity of the participants was ensured. The data were analysed using a coding program (NVivo 12), firstly in an explorative, open way. Subsequently, the axial coding phase was started to work towards patterns in the data. These were then used to develop the themes that eventually formed the chapters of this thesis.

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Applied research and ethical dilemmas

Applied anthropological research makes it possible for the non-academic world to benefit from the knowledge that is produced within the academic realm. Applied anthropology can build connections between the academic and the non-academic world, bridging the gap between them. This research was commissioned by and carried out in cooperation with RIGO, an Amsterdam-based research institute focussing on housing policy and the liveability of environments. The research proceedings were discussed with supervisors at RIGO as well as supervisors at the University of Amsterdam. I have followed RIGO’s suggestions on how to treat their contacts within housing associations and I have followed their guidance on how to communicate with these contacts, to make sure this research is maximally relevant, and the informants were treated the right way.

Ethical concerns in this research were mainly with my role as a researcher. It was difficult to explain to people who were not involved in the research (such as people who came to viewings) what I was doing there. I needed to legitimise my presence without giving away too many details and without scaring people away. This was difficult because my positionality sometimes seemed unclear to these people; they could be quite suspicious about research being done within the housing association. To ensure the informants’ anonymity, pseudonyms were chosen for every participant using a random name generator. Furthermore, the participating housing associations were also anonymised in order to make it impossible to trace the results back to a specific association.

Furthermore, at the same time as I was doing my research, another Applied Anthropology student did research in the same field as well. We thus had to share the limited opportunities for participant observation, interviews, and other meetings. Although we tried to communicate as well as possible, it was sometimes difficult to explain to people in the field that we were both doing research in that field. This situation led to even less research opportunities than there already were, but we tried to balance it as well as possible. Furthermore, because it took a while to start the research, the situation with the coronavirus really threw a spanner in the works. I had planned on conducting a few more interviews, but this proved to be impossible. As a result, this thesis was written with less data than originally intended.

At Beta, I was ultimately not allowed to continue my research. At a meeting with the rental department, my research was agreed on by the manager and other employees, and appointments were made. I therefore spent a day with rental employee Elisa, and a day at the customer service department with Tom. Then, however, the compliance officer of the housing

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20 association voiced his objection to the continuation of the research because of privacy concerns and because he did not see the added value of the research for the housing association. The data collected before these events has been used regardless, as the association did not object to that data being collected, the data was anonymised and there is added value in it for this study.

Lastly, it is important to consider that the original applied question that RIGO came up with differs from the output of this thesis. Whereas the original question mostly looked at unconscious bias or discrimination in the public housing sector, following the reports about this phenomenon in the private sector, this turned out to be almost impossible to research with an ethnographic method in the time frame of this research. However, dealing with diversity does not stop there; throughout the complete housing cycle employees need to take differences into account. This study places specific emphasis on their point of view.

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2. Contextual framework – public housing in Amsterdam

This chapter provides the reader with contextual information on the topic of public housing in Amsterdam. The housing situation in Amsterdam is unique, and as such it requires further explanation. To understand the societal context, the public housing system in the Netherlands will first be outlined. Secondly, the research location and research population for this research will be discussed. Finally, the influence of the coronavirus-pandemic on the research will be considered.

2.1. Public housing in the Netherlands

During the second half of the twentieth century, there were a lot of developments in the Dutch welfare system, in particular around the issue of housing, as decent housing was seen as a key element in people’s wellbeing (Van Kempen and Van Weesep 1994). During this time, the public housing sector was expanded in order to provide better housing for the lower classes in Dutch society. The general aim of public housing is to provide access to affordable housing for individuals who do not have access to private housing (Kromhout and Van Ham 2012). In the Netherlands, the public housing system comprises almost one-third of the total housing stock and serves low income groups as well as the middle class (ibid.).

In 1989, a policy change took place in the Netherlands, towards market-oriented housing policies. It was explicitly stated that the public housing sector (which was extensive at the time) should from then on, especially in the large cities, only provide accommodation for households with a below-modal income. To achieve this, and thus cause people with modal to high incomes to leave the public housing sector, there should be more expensive housing built in the Netherlands, to rent but mostly to buy. With this new policy, the public housing system also became based on the offer instead of the demand for housing. The Dutch government hoped to introduce more free market processes in the public housing system by doing this (Kromhout et al. 2016).

This policy, the Big Cities Policy (Grotestedenbeleid), was the major urban policy in the Netherlands from the 1990s onwards. It was introduced in 1994 and aimed at the four largest cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague) in the Nederlands, but it was extended to other cities as well. It aimed at strengthening the position of the cities and preventing polarisation along socio-economic, social and ethnic lines and gave priority to the prevention

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22 of spatial segregation of underprivileged residents.6 The assumption behind this was that creating a ‘social mix’ would lead to better liveability in neighbourhoods. “Although social mix is seldom defined,” Dekker and Bolt (2005: 2448) write, “it usually refers to heterogeneity in socioeconomic and/or ethnic terms.” This policy was primarily aimed at improving the liveability in deprived urban areas. To do this, the government strived for an increase of the number of higher-income households in problematic areas, which was assumed to lead to an improvement in liveability because higher-income households were expected to cause less nuisance. What also occurred, however, is an increase of differentiation in education, ethnicity, income, home ownership structure and lifestyle. This happened because higher-income residents often have a higher education level and are more often able to buy a house instead of renting it. Thus, more differences between inhabitants arise, which turned out to be a challenge to social cohesion. (Dekker and Bolt 2005).

The allocation system for public housing in the Netherlands is primarily based on the principle of freedom of choice, which implies that people who are looking for a dwelling are not on a waiting list but respond to advertisements themselves, on the basis of registration time (Kromhout et al. 2016: 3). Residence seekers start building up registration time from the moment they apply for public housing. There is much more demand for public housing than there are dwellings available. This leads to a demand surplus, which in turn produces long waiting lists. Research on the subject can look at ‘waiting time’ in two ways: on the basis of registration time (which is counted from when a person first applies for public housing) or on the basis of when a home seeker actively starts to look for a house. The registration times for public housing have been rising over the past few decades. To get a house in Amsterdam, home seekers have been enrolled in the system for 8,7 years on average (Kromhout et al. 2016), although recent figures by the municipality of Amsterdam suggest an even longer average registration period of eleven years.7 In turn, there need to be eligibility and allocation criteria

to determine who has access to public housing, who gets which house and who has the right to get a dwelling first (Kromhout and Van Ham 2012).

Public housing in the Netherlands is cheaper than private housing and it is generally owned by housing associations. The public housing system does not only serve low-income groups in their housing needs; in recent years, housing associations have also become responsible for the housing of ‘vulnerable populations.’ The reason why public housing is

6 Platform31, Grotestedenbeleid (1995-2015),

https://www.platform31.nl/wat-we-doen/kennisdossiers/stedelijke-vernieuwing/zeventig-jaar-stedelijke-vernieuwing/grotestedenbeleid. Accessed on 15 June 2020.

7 Gemeente Amsterdam. Nieuw systeem woonruimteverdeling. Consulted on 22 January 2020;

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23 cheaper is because housing associations are tied to rent limits; in 2020, monthly rent for public housing cannot be higher than €737,14.8 This means that housing associations have to rent out

their housing stock below market value. To rent in the public housing sector, there is an income limit.9

2.2. Research location and research population

This research took place within the region around Amsterdam, which comprises the capital and multiple municipalities around it: a geographical area that includes the northern part of the

Randstad.10 This geographical dimension is important because, as will later be further discussed, the housing shortage and other problems in Amsterdam spread to municipalities around it.

The housing problems in the Amsterdam region are seen as alarming. Housing costs are skyrocketing and in the public sector, as noted before, the registration time for people who are looking for a house is very high. According to data from 2019, there is a shortage of 6,6 percent of the current total housing stock.11 The municipality of Amsterdam also notes that there is

significant pressure on the public housing market in Amsterdam and the municipalities surrounding the city. The housing shortage thus seems to have created a spillover effect to surrounding areas. A home seeker registers for public housing in the whole of the Amsterdam region (via WoningNet), but there are differences in needed registration times between regions. For the reader, it is important to keep in mind that in this research, I refer to the waiting list that is for the entire region.

This research has been conducted at three housing associations in the Amsterdam region. Housing associations have the task of building, managing and renting out dwellings in the public housing sector. These are anonymised in this study to ensure their privacy: three random pseudonyms were used. In this study, they go by the names Alfa, Beta and Gamma. In addition, all individual informants have been anonymised as well. In practice, the research took place during viewings, on the road with rental employees, at other appointments and in the

8 WoningNet Regio Utrecht. Maximaal jaarinkomen voor sociale huurwoning. Consulted on 9 July 2020,

https://www.woningnetregioutrecht.nl/nl-NL/Paginas/Maximaal%20jaarinkomen#:~:text=Per%201%20januari%202020%20is,is%20vastgesteld%20op%20%E2%82%A C%2039.055.

9 Rijksoverheid. Hoe kom ik in aanmerking voor een sociale-huurwoning? Consulted on 25 November 2019;

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/huurwoning/vraag-en-antwoord/sociale-huurwoning-voorwaarden

10 The Randstad is the name for the Dutch metropolitan area that includes the four largest cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam,

Utrecht and The Hague.

11 AT5. Nog ruim 42.000 woningen tekort in regio Amsterdam. Consulted on 20 January 2020;

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24 offices of the three housing associations. This meant that the research population was primarily comprised of rental employees and office employees. Furthermore, the supervisor for the rental employees at one housing association and a knowledge specialist on housing at the same housing association were interviewed. In total, six informants were interviewed.

2.3. The influence of the coronavirus

At the beginning of 2020, reports of a new virus started coming in. Soon, it became a major global pandemic and inevitably started to influence this research. Due to problems with gatekeeping and gaining contact into housing associations, I had only started doing research at the beginning of February. Fast forward to mid-March, when the coronavirus had become a global pandemic, the government started advising people to work from home. Public life was diminished as much as possible, which also had its influence on the activities of housing associations, because those are all instances where people gather in groups.

On my last day of participant observation, the coronavirus was already spreading in the Netherlands, but the situation was not yet alarming. On this last day, I spent time in the office of Gamma in Amsterdam and accompanied a rental employee on her appointments. In the office that morning, we had some extra time because the first two scheduled appointments got cancelled. This provided us with some more spare time in the office, which we spent having a coffee together. At the coffee machine, I noticed that there were signs put up that said that employees should remember to wash their hands more often. However, these were the only visible signs that the field situation would soon change drastically. That came as a huge shock and it was difficult to adapt to the ‘new normal.’ Apart from these difficulties, I think that this study, and actually all fieldwork that has been conducted during this time, can provide a valuable knowledge base for the future, as it shows what happens in a time of rapid global change. This, I think, will be valuable for future generations.

The daily reality of working at a housing association also changed because of the pandemic. Employees had as little physical contact with people as possible, which meant that they, too, worked from home whenever possible. Key contact moments in the rental procedure had also changed. An informant told me that there were not as many people planning on moving to a new house, so that meant that there were less viewings. There were also less viewings because those could, in its original form, not be done without physical contact between people. Later, viewings were organised where potential tenants were able to go to a house individually, but this was much more time consuming. Thus, the process was delayed due to the anti-corona

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25 measures and as such, there were less people moving to a new house. Later on, housing associations also made it possible to go to a digital viewing. This demonstrates that the field where this research has been carried out changed rapidly and drastically during the course of my research, because of the developments in the coronacrisis. It is therefore important for the reader to keep in mind that the situation and procedures described in this thesis will have changed again.

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26

3. Navigating diversity and housing shortage

I am at Alfa’s office in central Amsterdam with rental employee Andrea. I have already spent two days accompanying her to her appointments. We built up considerable rapport, so I decided to ask her for an additional interview. When I arrive, she greets me warmly and takes me to the upstairs office area, where it is quieter than in the common area. However, her supervisor Joop is also sitting there and he seems to be listening to the interview. This makes me a bit nervous because he has been the gatekeeper for my contact with the rental employees and I do not want to influence our rapport. One moment, Andrea and I are speaking about the housing shortage in Amsterdam. “How long do people have to wait for a house again?” I ask her. I have seen the numbers, but I am curious whether she knows them by heart and whether we are on the same page. “Seventeen years on average,” she says, sighing. “It is really sad. We should actually probably be ashamed.”

3.1. Housing shortage in the Amsterdam region

Data collected by RIGO show that home seekers in the Amsterdam region need to wait for approximately 8,7 years before they get a house in the public housing sector (Kromhout et al. 2016). As is noted in this report by RIGO, these numbers refer to home seekers’ registration time, counting from when they first registered for public housing. Because of the housing shortage, most people register for public housing long before they plan to actually move. Thus, there is a difference between registration time and search time (zoekduur). The latter refers to the period of time where home seekers are actively searching for housing and respond to advertisements at least once a month (ibid.). The report shows that the average registration time for public housing has been on the rise, but that the same development is happening to the average search time. Another report shows that the problems are enlarged because the public housing stock is shrinking. Not only did policy decisions influence this, but much cheap housing has also been demolished. In turn, more expensive housing was built, which creates a shortage in cheaper housing for lower incomes (Leidelmeijer et al. 2018).

These numbers do ask for some nuance. How long potential tenants have to wait for a house depends various factors. Firstly, it depends on the kind of dwelling that people are looking for. In a RIGO report, it became clear that the differences between people who are

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27 looking for a one-family house and people who are content with a small apartment are huge. In this report, these kinds of dwellings were contrasted, and it became clear that people who were looking for a larger house had, on average, approximately two years more registration time before they got a house (Kromhout et al. 2016). Thus, they required two more years before they had a realistic chance, given that there was an even larger demand for one-family houses than for apartments. Secondly, the rules for allocation can also greatly influence the waiting times. Houses that are specifically advertised for young people (up to thirty years old) or older adults relatively often go to someone with a shorter registration time. These age restrictions mean that other potential tenants have a smaller chance to get a house, and people with a shorter registration time have a slightly higher chance (Kromhout et al. 2016: 26).

3.2. “I would not leave myself, either”

12

The geographical area where someone is looking for a house also makes a huge difference to how long it takes before they can rent a dwelling in the public housing sector. Within the Randstad, the differences in necessary registration time are huge.13 The regions around Amsterdam and Utrecht are known for the longest registration times, whereas the regions around The Hague and Rotterdam, for instance, are known for a much shorter average registration time. In an interview with Andrea, she expressed her frustration on this subject:

“But on the other hand,” she said, “it is also: everyone wants to live in Amsterdam. If you look a little further, in Purmerend, Almere, Lelystad, then you will get a house much quicker. But people still want to live in Amsterdam and of course there are also the most employment opportunities here. I live here too, and I would not leave myself, either.”14

For Andrea, it is understandable that people are not looking for housing outside of Amsterdam. There is a sort of universal pull factor of the city, which she underlines and confirms by saying that she would not want to leave herself.

12 Interview Andrea, 10 March 2020

13 The report states that comparison of these data could be problematic due to the different regional systems. There are

also differences in how registration time is defined and there is a lack of nationwide data collection. Nevertheless, these data do give us a broad overview of the geographical patterns.

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28 She also noted:

“For specific population groups, the whole family lives in the same neighbourhood in Amsterdam. Then it really is like, ‘my aunt lives there, my sister lives there and my brother lives across the street’. Then I also get that when your social network is here, you are not gonna go and live in Lelystad on your own. But that does mean that you cannot build enough houses to provide for the demand for housing. It’s just not possible.”15

However, in order to diminish the housing shortage, people will have to start looking at housing in other areas besides Amsterdam, informants say. Even within the region itself, there are regions where the housing shortage is less urgent. However, as another informant said during a conversation at the beginning of the research period, the pressure on these areas is also becoming more intense. “Even in Almere, there is now a waiting list of at least ten years. But nevertheless, it is a very interesting living area where there is a lot to gain.” It seems like housing shortage is spreading to other areas in the region around Amsterdam; it is thus not just the capital that needs to deal with housing shortage in the public housing sector.

Therefore, Ellen and Joop say it is important to make sure that people keep moving to a new house, to make sure that home seekers can get a house that fits their needs. “When people have a house in Amsterdam, they are not going to leave quickly,” Joop said.16 There are not

many opportunities to build new houses, as the city is already very full. Furthermore, where there is still space, the land is often privately owned, which means that it is difficult for a housing association to get a hold of it. “The average inhabitant in Amsterdam is really attached to the district that they live in,” Joop explains. “So, it is really difficult to make people move.” Whereas as he understood that, especially in the context of housing shortage, it is seen as essential for the functioning of the public housing system that there is sufficient flow through.17

What makes this even more difficult is the fact that municipalities around Amsterdam have their own rules regarding the allocation of public housing. “They are scared that too many people from Amsterdam are now moving there,” Ellen says. Thus, there seems to be a spill over effect regarding housing shortage. It is spreading from the city of Amsterdam to the municipalities around it, creating shortage there as well. As the informants said, people want to live as close to Amsterdam as possible and thus will not want to look to far from the region.

15 Interview Andrea, 10 March 2020 16 Interview Joop and Ellen, 14 May 2020 17 Ibid.

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Furthermore, Andrea felt like the housing shortage is not taken seriously by policymakers or politicians, or at least not serious enough:

“It is in the news quite often, that the waiting times are getting higher. It is not like I’m reading that in a specialist journal. But yeah, indeed, the waiting times are getting higher. But of course, I do not have a solution for that right now. And whatever is said in the news, also with the debate around nitrogen and pollution… In Amsterdam, it is unprofitable for investors to build more public housing. For it to be cost-effective you would have to rent out such a house for two thousand euros, and you cannot ask for more than 700 euros [because of the rent limits for public housing that are set by the government]. I think that the government should facilitate or help much more. We do not get all the subsidies that we used to get any more, so you have to do it all by yourself. And it is just really expensive.18

What becomes clear is that this informant thinks that the government is breaking down the public housing system by the diminishing of subsidies. As such, the public housing system is becoming more and more expensive for the housing association, who are restricted by rental price limits. In turn, this creates an interesting tension between national governmental agencies and housing associations. What I call ‘public housing’ is semi-public in the Netherlands; it is regulated by the government, but housing associations carry out the task of providing affordable housing with subsidies from the government. There is tension between housing associations and the government, as the former sometimes feel like they are not sufficiently supported by the latter. However, what creates the actual problem for the housing association is the fact that (potential) tenants look at them as the people who perform policy decisions that are actually made by the government. In the second empirical chapter, I will elaborate on this tension.

3.3. Gentrification

It is clearly visible that gentrification is taking place in Dutch cities. In the context of housing shortage, housing prices have been on the rise. Through gentrification processes, government agencies are after a more ‘liveable’ environment in cities. Uitermark et al. (2007) argue that gentrification in the Netherlands is state-led in collaboration with housing associations, with

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30 the aim of creating social order in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. “Gentrification is used to pacify tensions and to reduce concentrations that pose a problem for authorities” (Uitermark et al. 2007). However, social cohesion in these restructured neighbourhoods often is not improved. Interactions between low-income and higher-income households (and between renters and homeowners) are often “superficial at best and hostile at worst” (ibid.). Gentrification is thus seen as a force that undermines social cohesion. In the Netherlands, though, restructuring of neighbourhoods and sale of public housing is done with the goal of improving the social cohesion, liveability and safety in neighbourhoods.19 The assumption behind this is that

homeowners invest more in their house and in their direct surroundings. Furthermore, it is assumed that it improves social cohesion. Especially this last point requires further examination. Whilst social cohesion is indeed improved, this only seems to take place because vulnerable populations are driven out of an area. Those who had difficulties bonding with their environment and with their neighbours simply leave. Research on the subject of gentrification, however, never really asks: where do these people go? Jaffe and De Koning (2015: 27) write that “place-making can take on an exclusionary form,” which seems to be the case here. In line with McCann’s (2002) argument that built environment constitutes the meanings and power relations that develop within it, built environment here has symbolic importance. Those who feel like they do not belong are simply driven away. The further privatisation of public housing thus denies some people access to certain areas in the city, although housing associations try to make every neighbourhood accessible for everyone.20 Public housing residents, then, might be said to ‘lose’ their right to the city, as Lefebvre (1996) called it, or at least to some parts of the city. As such, class patterns are reproduced through the built environment of the city, as some areas become less accessible to less fortunate groups in society.

All of these processes are very difficult to understand for the average tenant, who is focussed on their own situation and vulnerability. Whilst both (potential) tenant and housing association are doing the best they can in the overstretched housing market, the mutual incomprehension inevitably leads to frustration.

19 Platform31, Herstructurering en verkoop van sociale huurwoningen.

https://www.platform31.nl/wijkengids/13-wetten-van-de-wijkaanpak/13-0-herstructurering-en-verkoop-van-sociale-huurwoningen. Accessed on 19 July 2020.

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3.4. Fairness and frustration

In an interview, Andrea stated that potential tenants experience it as very unfair that they have to wait so long to get a house. It is a recurring theme at every viewing, she said. Especially in the past few years, she has noticed that people blame refugees or other vulnerable groups who, in their experience, do get a house.21 Policy documents show that thirty percent of housing is

reserved for vulnerable groups.22 In the view of other ‘regular’ potential tenants, however, those

people ‘immediately’ get a house, and they are facilitated in everything, which is experienced as very unfair. Andrea says:

“What I often hear at viewings, actually at nearly every viewing, is that people see it as very unfair that they have to wait so long for a house. Especially in the last few years, they really point at refugees with a residence permit or other vulnerable groups that, in their view, get a house ‘immediately’ and are facilitated in everything. They do not see that as fair.”

She sighs and continues:

“It is not really like ‘own people first,’ but more like, ‘I have been waiting for twelve years and someone from Syria comes here, gets a house and it is decorated for them and they get welfare straight away, and I have to see how I am going to make ends meet.’ And then I think, well firstly that is not really true, and next to that, I would not want to exchange all of that misery for a house. What these people have been through to get to that point, no, I would not want to swap places. But people do not really see it that way.”23

The context of housing shortage in the Amsterdam region thus seems to enlarge the differences between people. A ‘them’ versus ‘us’ situation is created as regular home seekers look at prioritised groups, whilst not realising what these people have had to go through in their lives to get to that point. This is a very individualised point of view, created by the scarcity of housing in the public sector, which in itself includes some and excludes others.

Joop also is familiar with the tenants’ emphasis on fairness but he thinks that it is a bit unfair that the housing association gets so much criticism from the people that they are actually trying to help. “I do think that it is difficult sometimes that people complain about dwellings

21 Interview Andrea, 10 March 2020

22 Gemeente Amsterdam, Programmaplan huisvesting kwetsbare groepen. Published on 14 March 2019. Accessed on 19

July 2020.

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32 that could be worth 1500 euros, but which we rent out to them for 600 euros. I sometimes long for a realisation that we are actually doing something for them,”24 he says. He continues, but his voice sounds a bit frustrated.

“We are often seen as the rich club that does not really care about their tenants. But we do so much to help the people that need a little more care! I feel like clients often do not get that.”25

In Joop’s opinion, tenants who live in Amsterdam actually have it quite well. He compares Amsterdam to other metropoles like London and New York. “Forget it,” he says;

“You’re living in a metropole and we can give you a house in De Pijp [a very popular neighbourhood in the centre of Amsterdam] for which we could ask 1800 euros every month, but which we rent out for 600 euros. And then people want you to plaster the walls for them. Or is that too naïve?”26

The employees of the housing associations understand that it is important to the potential tenants that they get a house and that the housing shortage frustrates them, but as my key informant said, they personally cannot do anything about it. Since they personally have to deal with the potential tenants, they are also the ones who have to bear these frustrations and deal with them. People tend to ask on which place on the ranking they are when they are at a viewing; they can also see this on WoningNet themselves when they apply for a house. However, a rental employee said that they sometimes ask her personally why they are at such a low place on the ranking whilst they did already wait for several years. It can be difficult, sometimes, to explain that the rental employees do not have an influence on this ranking.27 It seems like the burden of proof is often on the rental employees from the housing associations, as they are the ones in direct contact with potential tenants. As such, they serve as the ‘face’ of the organisation and thus have to deal with the emotions and frustrations of (potential) tenants. More on this will follow in the next chapter.

24 Interview Joop and Ellen, 14 May 2020 25 Ibid.

26 Interview Joop and Ellen, 14 May 2020 27 Interview Angela, 10 March 2020

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