The energy crisis, that began in 2021 has exacerbated energy poverty throughout Europe. Households with lower incomes, higher energy requirements, and less efficient homes and appliances are disproportionately affected by this crisis. These households often lack the financial capacity to upgrade outdated and inefficient appliances, such as refrigerators and washing machines. This then leads to increased energy costs or necessitates cutbacks in other energy uses such as heating, which in turn diminishes their residential comfort. In response to this issue, the Dutch government has implemented various strategies to mitigate energy poverty, including the 'White Goods Scheme'. The term ‘White Goods Schemes’ usually refers to a governmental initiative that offers financial incentives or assistance to consumers to encourage the purchase of new, energy-efficient household appliances. Despite such initiatives, there is hardly any research evaluating their effectiveness. This study examined the impact of the 'White Goods Scheme' in two regions of the Netherlands, by means of a questionnaire among residents (N = 541), comparing households that have made use of a white goods scheme (intervention group; N = 310) with households that have not yet made use of a white goods scheme (control group; N = 231). The findings show that the white goods schemes have the potential to improve residential comfort conditions, enhance physical health and reduce energy costs and financial concerns, yield better mental health. Yet, the causal mechanisms behind these connections need to be further scrutinised. While the scheme has demonstrated positive outcomes in terms of comfort, financial well-being and health, it is suggested that combining improvements like shallow retrofits and appliance schemes with other local support initiatives like energy advice is essential to address energy poverty, effectively.

Rising energy prices across Europe have increased concerns over energy poverty. Despite significant scholarly focus on financial relief measures instituted by national governments, locally tailored crisis measures have remained overlooked. This study delves into the Dutch context, where part of the government's response to the energy crisis was decentralised, allowing municipalities considerable discretion in experimenting with energy poverty interventions. It compares two strategies: ‘energy coaching’ services – offering advice on sustainable energy practices – and shallow retrofitting by ‘fix teams’ – installing minor energy-saving measures in homes. The impact of these interventions on residential comfort, sustainable behaviour adoption, and (financial concerns regarding) energy bills is assessed through an extensive survey involving treatment and control groups coupled with detailed administrative data on households and dwellings. Results indicate that, on an aggregate level, local interventions significantly enhanced perceived comfort and reduced energy bills among the treatment groups. Comparing individual interventions, notably, more extensive ones such as fix teams and comprehensive energy coaching were significantly more impactful than those involving a single visit, highlighting the importance of continuous engagement. Additionally, we found that energy poverty status significantly amplified the effectiveness of these interventions, thereby stressing the importance of focusing efforts on vulnerable households.

Decisions made by social housing providers (SHPs) profoundly affect their tenants' energy affordability, a group characterised by above-average energy poverty rates. Concentrated deprivation in this tenure has intensified due to policy-driven ‘residualisation’, compelling SHPs to serve almost exclusively low-income and marginalised households. Despite this, research exploring the potential of SHPs to tackle energy poverty through targeted interventions for their most vulnerable tenants remains sparse. The 2021–2022 energy price crisis offers a unique context to investigate this issue, given its substantial impact on household energy affordability. This study delves into insights of social housing professionals through focus groups conducted in France, England, and the Netherlands. It examines their views on the effectiveness of interventions and assesses their feasibility within the respective institutional contexts. We find that SHPs generally favour retrofit prioritisation and behavioural interventions as effective means of supporting at-risk tenants, whereas alterations in rent setting or housing allocation are considered potentially impactful but often undesirable or impracticable. We identify institutional barriers and lack of data as key obstacles to SHPs' adoption of more targeted interventions. To empower SHPs in tackling energy poverty, housing policy reforms must acknowledge and address the significant impact of energy costs within total housing expenses.

While governments have been promoting private renting in recent decades to increase housing supply, they have not necessarily facilitated this. The Netherlands is a case in point, as rent price control has been reduced in this century with the aim to give more leeway to private rental investment. Private renting achieved a turn-around in market share from 10 per cent of dwellings in 2009 to more than 13 per cent in 2023. Most of this growth can be attributed to the rental segment where rents were not controlled: it increased to about 50% of rental dwellings in 2021. Recently increasing housing shortages followed by societal unrest and elections caused the Dutch government to formulate new plans. Not only was the building of 1 million housing units programmed and stimulated, also plans to (temporarily) re-control rents of a large part of the de-controlled rental segment were formulated. Tax measures reducing the attractiveness of investment in private renting have been taken recently as well because of diverse reasons (protecting tenants; court decision on taxing wealth). To study these effects on private renting investments, this study aims to analyze the effects of these changes on the investment behavior of landlords in the Netherlands, in a context of rising inflation. The two studies in this contribution show that new supply will most likely lose out.

This chapter shows how different constellations of state, market actors and civil actors lead to different housing policies and outcomes, both over space and time. This process is illustrated by an analysis of the Dutch housing system.

Van bruin naar rood: het bouwen van woningen op veehouderijlocaties vormt een uitweg uit de stikstofproblematiek die Nederland in de greep houdt. Uiteraard is deze stap complex en gevoelig, maar op bepaalde locaties is het toch heel goed mogelijk. TU Delft-afstudeerder Samuel Orobio de Castro deed onderzoek naar de kansen en randvoorwaarden, met een vorm van ontwikkelend onderzoek.

In recent years, the housing market of Amsterdam, traditionally known for its large share of social rental dwellings, experienced a trend of commodification and financialization. Due to its central position and good facilities, the Dutch capital has become very popular among both home seekers and investors.

Since energy prices across Europe started to rise in 2021, there has been growing concern of social housing tenants at risk of energy poverty. So far, studies have largely focused on the role of governments and on what tenants themselves could do. However, research has rarely considered specific targeting approaches by social housing providers (SHPs). This study explores the role of these stakeholders and investigates what policies French, English, and Dutch social housing providers could adopt to enhance the effectiveness of their energy poverty alleviation efforts. Focus groups with practitioners demonstrated their perspectives on the most effective interventions, their benefits and challenges, and their variation across policy contexts. We found that social housing professionals perceive a significant responsibility in addressing energy poverty among their tenants, but that there remains uncertainty regarding their role within the welfare state. While views and practices among SHPs vary, most deem prioritisation of retrofits and targeting behavioural interventions more effective and feasible approaches than setting rents progressively and targeting allocations. Particularly the presence of institutional barriers and a lack of data hinder SHPs from implementing a more targeted approach in addressing energy poverty.

Energy efficiency renovation (EER) of the existing residential housing stock is crucial to achieving further decarbonization to be climate neutral by 2050. This transition is particularly challenging for affordable rental housing providers as they have to make intensive investment decisions while balancing rental affordability for their low- and middle income tenants. The affordable housing market is designed to provide affordable and accessible accommodation for individuals or families who may have difficulties finding suitable housing in the private rental market due to low income, disabilities, senior age or other vulnerable characteristics. Although the affordable rental housing providers design, invest, coordinate and perform energy-efficiency measures to improve the energy label of the existing housing stock, in many cases they need the approval of the tenants to finally execute the EER. Depending on the national governance, arrangements and regulations, as well as the event of a well-structured arrangement, tenants may exert a degree of influence on the decision-making process. We propose that it is necessary to understand the attitudes, strategies and perceptions of people occupying affordable housing, to be able to include them efficiently in the whole EER-decision-making process. This study aims to compile all behavioural factors analysed in literature and cluster them to reveal behavioural barriers and involvement preferences. We will offer a holistic profile of influencing factors unravelling tenants behavioural characteristics and lay a solid foundation for the design of potential policy and behavioural interventions to accelerate the EER in the affordable housing sector.

In this policy brief, we provide relevant guidelines and recommendations for each of these phases, based on our evaluation of the UPLIFT co-creation process in the four different cities. These guidelines and recommendations are meant to inspire and provide support to governments and/or service providers that want to start a similar co-creation process.

This report addresses energy poverty in social housing, proposing solutions to aid an inclusive energy transition. It highlights the disproportionate impact of rising prices on vulnerable tenants, suggesting short-term measures like energy advice and energy-saving kits, along with long-term strategies such as prioritising renovations for those in need and reforming housing allocation policies to combat the issue effectively.

The European energy crisis of 2022 stresses the importance of protecting the most vulnerable households. Price peaks disproportionally affect households with low incomes, limited savings, and inefficient homes, and increased energy poverty: the inability to secure sufficient domestic energy services that allow for participation in society (Bouzarovski & Petrova, 2015).

Since European social housing countries have become increasingly residualised, a significant share of households in or at risk of energy poverty are being accommodated by social housing providers (Poggio & Whitehead, 2017; Walker, 2008). However, while most practitioners acknowledge that social housing providers (SHPs) have a responsibility in energy poverty alleviation, targeted intervention approaches have hardly been explored (Desvallees, 2022). The body of scholarship on energy poverty measurement has grown rapidly, but its use in practice has hardly been addressed (Bouzarovski et al., 2021). Sherriff et al. (2019) note that a possible explanation might be that insights from research are inadequately communicated to policymakers and practitioners. Charlier and Legendre (2021) add that the sense of urgency has substantially differed across countries.

This paper aims to combat these gaps, by proactively engaging with practitioners across Europe to find out which targeted intervention approaches are considered most effective, what their benefits and potential (regulatory) obstacles are, and whether these perspectives differ in different policy contexts. We indirectly examine the responsibilities SHPs are willing to accept within a ‘just transition’, and explore whether, and if so how, their apparent techno-economic approach to retrofit provision could be altered (De Feijter et al., 2019).

For young adults on the Amsterdam housing market the accessibility of housing has been decreasing for years, due to soaring house prices and rents, the shrinkage and residualization of the social rental sector, and the precarization of the labor market. Consequently, many young people struggle to secure an affordable and adequate dwelling and are stuck in insecure and chaotic housing pathways. Current housing policies in Amsterdam are struggling to effectively respond to these challenges. In an effort to better understand and address the specific housing problems of young people, the Municipality of Amsterdam, housing association Lieven de Key, resident organization !Woon, Delft University of Technology and a group of local young people have started a co-creation process within the framework of the H2020 UPLIFT project. The goal of this co-creation process is to unravel the real-life experiences of young people and to co-create new or improved policy initiatives with them. This paper examines the results of said policy co-creation process in order to evaluate its methodology as well as its impact on the participating actors - young people in particular - and on the policymaking approach. We analyze the benefits and limits of this type of participatory practice in addressing housing issues and try to draw conclusions on its applicability in a larger context.

This document aims to outline the process of co-creation of housing policy with young people in the city of Amsterdam. It is directed at researchers and policymakers who wish to gain more knowledge of the objectives, strategies and methods pertaining to the development of a Reflexive Policy Agenda.

Recent energy price spikes have led to increased energy poverty among low-income households living in inefficient homes. Accurate statistics on energy poverty help inform resource allocation and better target relief schemes and retrofit funds. Existing indicators are predominantly defined in terms of a headcount ratio – the share of population living below a certain threshold or poverty line. In this paper we draw from the literature on income poverty evaluation to argue that the use of more elaborate energy poverty gap indices can substantiate the design and monitoring of energy poverty policies, by not only considering incidence but also intensity and inequality of energy poverty across households. We demonstrate that the choice for a particular energy poverty (gap) indicator makes the implicit welfare choices of energy poverty policies explicit. We illustrate our arguments for the case of the Netherlands, using recently developed microdata statistics on energy poverty, and an imposed energy price shock. We show that spatial targeting of relief funds based on incidence would neglect the full depth of energy poverty deprivation. Finally, we argue that visualisation techniques from the income poverty literature help to comprehend different poverty orderings and draw comparisons between time periods, regions, and subgroups.

The current document is the result of the research activities carried out in Work Package 3 (WP3) of the UPLIFT project1 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It aims to understand which micro, meso and macro level factors influence vulnerable young people's decisions in education, employment and housing, and how these young people create their own strategies and make choices within the possibilities available in the given locality.

This Guidebook is the final deliverable of the work package 4 (WP4) of the UPLIFT project. The overall aim of this work package was to explore how young people’s voices can be put at the centre of youth policy. In order to do this, we carried out four parallel policy co-creation processes with young people in four different locations across Europe, each with a different focus – education, housing and NEET youth. The process took the best part of three years and involved several institutional stakeholders, as well as dozens of young people. This deliverable is a comprehensive outlook of the WP4 work in all four locations – Tallin, Sfântu Gheorghe, Barakaldo and Amsterdam.

This report examines the scales and dimensions of inequality in the functional urban area (FUA) of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Our purpose is to understand how the drivers of socio-economic inequality, and the policies responding to these, operate in this local context. Particular attention is paid to the room for action of local policies and the ways in which policy-makers and stakeholders conceptualize, and respond to, the existing challenges.

This report examines the scales and dimensions of inequality in the functional urban area (FUA) of Leuven, in the Flemish region of Belgium. Our purpose is to understand how the drivers of socio-economic inequality, and the policies responding to these, operate in this local context. Particular attention is paid to the room for action of local policies and the ways in which policy-makers and stakeholders conceptualize, and respond to, the existing challenges.

Traditionally, Chinese migrant workers are housed in dormitories or in the private rental sector. In recent years, however, an increasing proportion of the migrant workers has managed to become home owners. This paper further analyzes this trend, which may signify a new phase in the Chinese urbanization process. After a review of the existing literature, we carry out a statistical analysis (binary regression modelling) on the China Migrants Dynamic Survey, thereby focusing on twenty cities in the Yangtze River delta urban region. For these cities, we determine the micro-level (characteristics of individual migrants) as well as of the city level (city size, local migration policies, housing market development) determinants of migrant home ownership, and we assess how these determinants have changed between 2012 and 2017. This will provide insight into changing housing pathways of Chinese migrant workers, and the interaction of these pathways with local policies .