The Dutch urban housing policy shifted from urban renewal to urban restructuring and the formation of more socially mixed neighborhoods and the motives for restructuring stem from the ongoing debates on concentration, segregation and social mix. Here, we focus on the main instruments of urban restructuring means the demolition of social housing and the construction of more expensive rental and owner occupied housing. Continued restructuring may eventually lead to a shortage of social rented dwellings for low income households and the target group of social housing. An important political question is therefore whether the dwindling supply of social housing still matches the potential demand in the target group. Although demolition has brought about substantial changes, the share of social rented housing remains high in most restructuring neighborhoods and restructuring has not resulted in concentrations of social rented housing in other, non restructuring neighborhoods.

The large social housing stock at the beginning of the 1990s was a legacy of the dire shortages during the post-war era and the 1980s. In the post-war era housing associations served households in most urgent need of housing. As there was a serious housing shortage social dwellings were not exclusively distributed to lower-income households. By 1990 the housing shortages were deemed by and large solved, and the idea of a social, collective housing sector with broad access lost part of its political support. The white paper ‘Housing in the 1990s’ (MVROM, 1989) changed the allocation task in the Housing Management Decree to providing housing, preferentially for lower income groups.