Towards inclusive service delivery through social investment in the Netherlands. An analysis of five sectors, with particular focus on housing service.

The Dutch recessions of 2009, 2012 and 2013 kicked off a series of spending cuts, which were, among others, achieved by reforms of the social security system, as well as the long-term health care system. The Nether­lands placed an increasing emphasis on incentives for people to find employment, whilst access to care facilities was made more difficult, in part by making access require­ments more stringent or making access more expensive. As a result, both the number of social assistance benefit recipients and the numbers of citizens having difficulties with making ends meet rose.

This RE-InVEST Work Package 6 country report analyses existing market regulations in the Netherlands reflecting social (dis)investment in relation to human rights and capabilities in five basic service sectors using two approaches. The first ‑ a macro ‑ approach articulates how the recent reforms in four service sector (early childhood education and care, health care, financial services and drinking water services) impacted on the Dutch population. The analyses are mostly based on a literature study, which was kicked off by our RE-InVEST sector experts and completed by the authors of this report.

The approach involved analysing the experiences of seven of Rotterdam's residents, most of whom found themselves in a financially vulnerable position at the start of this project in the fourth quarter of 2015. For this report, they shared their experiences in the spring of 2017 in two group sessions. In the second group session employees from social landlords and the municipality, as well as members of a political party joined in the discussion.

As framework of analysis, this participative study draws on the concept of capabilities which refer to the opportunities or freedom of persons to opt for certain beings or doings defining a person’s well-being (Sen, 1999). The latter will be influenced by available resources and skills and prevailing norms and institutions, including human rights, which embody the universal values for well-being and a good life.

In terms of take up, affordability, and quality of services, this study shows that the Netherlands scores relatively well on average for the four service sectors (early childhood education and care, health care, financial services and drinking water services). However, averages imply that some citizens are worse off: lower-income households are often relatively worse off than higher-income households. Of the service sectors discussed here, perhaps only in the case of a basic transaction banking account, this statement may not be valid. Furthermore, a number of services, such as debt management and special early childhood education are targeted on house­holds in financial problems or with children with a language disadvantage, respectively. Others, such as affordable health and childcare services offer special provisions for households with a lower income, while again others, such as access to drinking water are not facilitated for households with a lower income.

As underlyer to any public services, the Netherlands operates an income support safety net system, which represents a strong traditional welfare principle. Nevertheless, in practice the safety net may not suffice for certain households. They may then be excluded from society (for example, when households are discon­nected from water services).

Major reforms and cuts in a number of service sectors in the last decade have aggravated differences between income groups and/or have initiated or strengthened social economic inequalities in the access to services, such as in the cases of ECEC and health care.

These reforms, which in line with a ‘modern’ neoliberal ideology involved privatisation and (regulated) competition between suppliers, as well as austerity aiming for improving efficiency by controlling costs, will hardly have produced any social investment. In RE-InVEST terms social investment initiates the sustainable enhancement of capabilities. Furthermore, social investment is a policy that the Netherlands has not made explicit, despite the move towards a participation society. For example, the austerity measures in long-term health care and ECEC are speculated to create a need for more informal care, while the female’s position on the labour market is already at a disadvantage.

Making explicit what social investment is to be about in the Netherlands, what the participation society is to achieve, and how the interrelations are formulated between classic welfare intervention and these con­cepts, is more than welcome. Such a policy formulation is needed to shed light on the policy aims in terms of when universal and/or selective basic or social rights are at stake in relation to how the capabilities of individuals are affected. Such a formulation will also need to provide extra protection for those vulnerable households that are ‘surviving’ rather than able to pursue their well-being.

As with the other four types of service, investment in the home (housing services) can be considered a social investment, because of its social role in delivering benefits to society (health and social inclusion, etc.). An extension of an individual’s capability set aiming to secure a roof over one’s head may be instrumental in freeing energy to be spent on other areas of well-being and in creating freedom of choice in these areas. The question for this report then was whether recent housing policies reflect any social disinvestment in relation to enhancing ‘housing’ capabilities. Deprivation was analysed as a multi-dimensional phenomenon in terms of three anthropological roles: the judge, the receiver and the doer.

As the participants in this project, who had difficulties making ends meet, mostly lived in a social rental dwelling with a right to housing allowances, they generally expressed that as a receiver of assistance they worried about the future. They worried about the impact of the total of all austerity measures, also outside the field of housing, while income had been stagnating as a result of austerity measures, limiting their free­dom of choice.

In housing, the accompanying trend, which was observed to have started before the crisis, was a move towards marketisation (more market-conforming rent, sale of affordable housing) and more targeting of aid. When the economy picked up, the effects of gentrification were impacting the housing choices of the lower- and middle-income households in Rotterdam, the participants observed: housing policies had shifted towards a weakening of the traditional universal implementation of the right to housing, thereby impeding their freedom to choose. One of the participants stated it as follows: ‘Housing has become a luxury, hasn’t it, particularly to live in the city’. The extent to which the value judgements of the participants as judge were taken into account in local policies was much more of grey area than the ability to voice an opinion. The realisation of a true participative society can therefore still be considered weak.

As a doer the participants generated many ideas on how to compensate for some loss in freedom to choose: how to access affordable housing and how to lower housing costs. However, for many of the ideas, acting together, the participants considered key for success: either voluntarily with like-minded individuals/ households in formal stings like a tenant client board, or informal settings, such as in a poverty network, or in more dependent relations with social organisations (social landlords) or local government assistance. (Local) Government as well as social landlords would also still be able to contribute to increasing the capa­bility set of households in need, was a conclusion that all participants supported: co-operate with the tenant to strengthen their capability for voice was one of the appeals made.

Developments on the Dutch housing market have left relatively untouched the position of sitting tenants and owner-occupiers. They are (still) relatively protected by long-term rental and mortgage contracts, as well as financial aid in terms of housing allowances and subsidies for owner occupation, respectively, on the one hand. On the other hand, outsiders increasingly can no longer move into central urban areas because of a lack of affordable and adequate housing. In this study, the gap has been shown to be re-enforced by the shift in Dutch ‘housing’ society from cohesion to anonymity. Those with any type of success in alternatives (doing, receiving evaluating) stand stronger than those without. The question whether the social right to decent housing will continue to be adequately served in the longer term welcomes an affirmative answer.