The Netherlands has been in a serious housing crisis for the past few years. The current housing shortage is estimated at 315.000 units and house prices have increased significantly. Especially first-time buyers experience a decrease in accessibility to the Dutch owner-occupied housing market, and their position on the housing market deteriorates. The government has implemented several regulations in attempt to increase this accessibility, and organizations have introduced alternative purchase instruments that are designed to increase the accessibility of first-time buyers to the market. Despite all these efforts, access to the housing market remains a serious challenge for first-time buyers.
The accessibility of first-time buyers to the owner-occupied housing market is highly relevant to the functioning of the housing market as whole, since it stimulates the housing market flow. Additionally, the inaccessibility to the owner-occupied market results in households not being able to build equity through homeownership, stimulating a prosperity gap. Although studies have researched the position of first-time buyers on the housing market, as well as provided a comparison between several alternative purchase instruments, there is a lack of research on how these instruments enhance the accessibility of first-time buyers to the housing market and which factors form a barrier in this enhancement. Therefore, this research identifies the factors limiting the access of first-time buyers to the housing market, and establishes through a comparative study the enablers and barriers of four alternative purchase instruments in the Netherlands with regard to enhancing the increase in the accessibility. The identified barriers are transformed into suggestions for alterations of the alternative purchase instruments to increase the impact they have on enhancing the accessibility of first-time buyers to the market. Literature study on first-time buyers, their limitations, and alternative purchase instruments in the Netherlands was complemented with interviews, providing several perspectives on the alternative purchase instruments. The main limitation of first-time buyers in acquiring homeownership is their limited financing capacity. The group of first-time buyers with an income between €40.000 and €60.000 (equal to 1 –1,5 modal income) experience the greatest limitations since their income is too high to be eligible for social rent, but too low to get access to enough financial resources to purchase a property on the owner-occupied housing market. The analysis of the empirical data shows that on the small scale that the instruments are currently deployed in, they are successful in increasing the accessibility of first-time buyers to the housing market since they lower the necessary funding capacity. However, the deployment capacity of the instruments is being influenced by external factors, limiting the ability to increase the deployment capacity of the instruments and therefore the impact on the increase of accessibility of first-time buyers. By making a purchase instrument individual bound instead of property bound, the deployment capacity is no longer dependent on the supply side of the housing market. This also lowers the desire to apply an instrument to the same property for multiple households, allowing households to pay off the instrument’s rights and acquire the bare property rights. Finally, the division of financial benefits should be in equilibrium, meaning that the financial benefits should be high enough on the supplier’s side for the instrument to be viable, but also on the user’s side since financing capacity is the main problem these instruments try to tackle.
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St. Maarten is one of the islands in the Caribbean, situated within the hurricane belt of the Atlantic Ocean. In september 2017, it was hit directly by a hurricane called Irma, causing widespread damage to the island. As many other Caribbean islands, St. Maarten is highly depending on tourism as an income, which with drawled in the aftermath of the hurricane. Since the 1960s, its nature, better known as ‘sea, sand & sun’, created a high economic value. Old plantations, salt winning, fishing and cattle slowly disappeared to maximize the tourism. Additionally, the island has become one of the most dense islands of the world. The development of the mass tourism has caused destruction of habitats, intense use of land, decreasing biodiversity and the pollution, forming huge threats for the ecosystems. We could say that St. Maarten’s biggest product is in danger. However, the natural environment of the island has already shown that it’s highly resilient and could solve many sustainable challenges for the mankind. Aware of the economical dependency on tourism, I studied how this form of recreation could be used to enhance the natural environment, instead of influencing it in a destructive way. The chosen site is a place where nature, development and history come together. The area of Red Pond/Gibbs bay comprise a pond with mangroves, the coastal area, ruins of a plantation and a concrete structure of an unfinished resort. All of these layers together form a complex project of several levels through time, community and nature. Minimal interventions taken on the existing buildings, modern ruins, should enhance the relationship between human activity and the ecology. It supports movement by collectives planned on a strategic location - not only used by humans. These interventions consist not only of addition of architectural elements, but certain grades of demolition as well. At some places the built objects support the ecosystem, other places they facilitate human actions within the ecosystem. ... Read more

A research on how to design affordable and sustainable housing for those affected by the gap in the housing market. It is getting more and more difficult for certain people to find suitable and affordable housing. They earn too much for social housing, but too little for the private sector or an owner-occupied housing. Especially in the city this group of people is slowly pushed out and sometimes forced to find housing elsewhere. This has a negative effect on the personal and financial growth of this people, but also on the economic, social and sustainable growth of the city itself.
This research has been divided in three parts; [1] The gap in the housing market (the issue and its consequences), [2] the post-war neighbourhood, Zuidwijk (the social-historical context), and [3] sustainability (people, planet, prosperity). The target groups, those affected by the gap in the housing market, play a big role within this research. This is necessary to understand for whom you are designing and what needs to be done to solve the issue; this is part of the social sustainability. Certain questions need to be answered: who are they; what issues do they encounter; what are their living requirements; what can they actually afford?
Design principals, requirements and limitations will follow from each research parts. These may summarise and translate the finding in each chapter and can be used as tools when coming to a design.
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