Europe correspondent Christoph Nufer from the Swiss public TV broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen plans a reportage in the Netherlands to investigate how the Dutch organised its unique housing market.
Two thirds of the apartments in Amsterdam are rented through a special social housing system that keeps prices low for people with small budgets. The idea behind the policy is that Amsterdam keeps its mixed population.
Sadly enough most of the apartments are relatively small and vacancies do not appear often. This forces young families to move to a larger house outside the city. Since many of these family members still work in town, this causes a serious increase of traffic jams.
Also the housing policy from the sixties and seventies to stimulate suburbanisation to cities further away from the bigger cities in the West, plays a large role in the terrifying increase of traffic jams.
Most new housing projects in the west of the Netherlands now factor in larger apartments and a large percentage of cheaper housing to keep the families in the west.
For this production Featurez gave advice, did the research, set-up and the planning of the filming.