Price for Protection
How accessible are Policy-backed Adaptation Finance Instruments?
S. Gupta (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
E.H.M. Geurts – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
T.A.O.E. Esteban – Mentor (TU Delft - Architecture and the Built Environment)
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Abstract
Subsidence affects a growing share of Rotterdam’s pre-war housing stock, with concentrated incidence in low-income neighbourhoods such as Bloemhof. Here, household incomes and property values are comparatively low. The Dutch Foundation Repair Fund (Fonds Duurzaam Funderingsherstel, FDF), available nationally through SVn, is the primary public instrument. It is designed to enable individual homeowners to finance foundation repair. This thesis examines how the FDF’s funding rules enable or disable access for the vulnerable homeowners who are most in need of the instrument.
The research adopts a qualitative, case study approach, examining three analytically distinct dimensions of access. Eligibility, affordability, and attainability are examined against the socioeconomic and housing conditions of Bloemhof homeowners. The findings show that residents face simultaneous obstacles across all three dimensions. Many fall outside eligibility thresholds or sit at the margin of creditworthiness; the loan mechanism provides insufficient financial relief, given the disproportionately high cost-to-value ratio in the neighbourhood. Lastly, the procedural demands of the instrument are most onerous for the households least equipped to navigate them.
The thesis concludes that the FDF does not contain an embedded exclusionary intent, but that its calibration, centred on repayments and individual asset value, does not mitigate the inequalities it is intended to address. A more equitable instrument would lend against demonstrated need rather than asset value. It could operate at the scale of the physical problem and carry more of the navigational and financial burden institutionally, rather than assigning it to the household.