Woonbron wishes to create more opportunities to offer residents more choices in their housing contract, such as renting, buying or variants of renting/buying such as fixed rent, guaranteed purchase or comfort purchase. This enables Woonbron to combine the separate rental and purchase sectors into one 'housing sector'.

Housing corporation Woonbron offers single-family homes and apartments in different price categories 'To Live'. This means that the corporation allows the residents to decide for themselves whether they wish to buy or rent their house. In 2006, eleven housing corporations signed a letter of intent in which they agreed to work together to continue developing the so-called To Live concept. The eleven corporations currently offer a combined total of approximately 25,000 residences 'To Live', and this number will only increase over the coming years.

In 1996, Woonbron first came up with the idea to let customers choose between renting and buying. After including this idea in the strategy document, Woonbron began elaborating and implementing this 'To Live' concept, initially under the product name Klant Kiest (Customer Choice).

The essence of the concept is that the majority of Woonbron's customers will eventually be able to choose between two rental variants and two purchase variants. In 2000, the concept was expanded into several pilot projects. Maarten Vos en René Scherpenisse first published an article about 'Customer Choice' in Aedes Magazine in July 2000.
By the end of 2003, Woonbron had decided to implement 'To Live' across the board, with the permission of the City and the Board of Commissioners.

The Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment has provided phased assistance based on advice from the Centraal Fonds, with the agreement that an extensive evaluation after 2004 will offer insight into the mastery of this concept.

The factors that made the project successful were its eventual acceptance by governments and the political attention gained for promoting home ownership, as well as the favourable housing market.

To Live is a means to build beautiful neighbourhoods that are capable of supporting themselves, in addition to all sorts of efforts to improve the quality of life. This means that the To Live project is not a guarantee for increased participation in the labour market, but the corporation's social mission entails providing the facilities that can increase labour participation in the chain of 'living-learning-working-care'.

Woonbron
Lucy Lagerweij, tel. 0031 102755300

01/01/2002

case

Urban Policy

Housing, Economy knowledge & employment