Resident of Amsterdam here, any policy the city is going to come up with is realistically speaking only re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at this poin

Resident of Amsterdam here, any policy the city is going to come up with is realistically speaking only re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at this point. Some systemic issues: 1) Building new & building up is mostly politically impossible. A large part of the city is effectively a historic open-air museum. Supply is always going to be squeezed. 2) The rent controlled market is huge in The Netherlands and disproportionately big in Amsterdam compared to the rest of the country. This puts off #1 because low-income people have an out, but squeezes prices on the middle and upper-end, and creates generational special-interests groups (there's decade-long waiting periods, people pass off such properties to immediate family etc.). Most of the profit construction companies make on (highly regulated) new construction is reportedly on the relatively small proportion of apartments they're allowed to sell for a high price on the free market. The rest is on the mandatory public housing market from day one. 3) A further squeeze on non-rent controlled properties is created because some of those only escape that "market" by having a bunch of "points" that are calculated as a function of size, amenities etc.: [A] & [B]. This creates all sorts of absurd situations. E.g. having a sink on some random wall in the middle of a bedroom purely because it (along with other crazy point hacking) brought the property just over the point limit. 4) (Re-)zoning of properties that do exist is relatively restricted and centrally micro-managed. 5) Interest rates have been dropping for years, leading to inflated property prices. It's relatively easy to get sub-2% loans, even as low as 1.5%. A. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woningwaarderingsstelsel#Punten https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woningwaarderingsstelsel#Punte... B. https://www.huurcommissie.nl/fileadmin/afbeeldingen/Downloads/Handleidingen/Beleidsboek_zelfstandige_woonruimte_versie_1_oktober_2016.pdf https://www.huurcommissie.nl/fileadmin/afbeeldingen/Download...