[Ferre]

Originally Posted by South

That's from the year 2000 by Yohan Sleegers M.A. for the American Psyciatrics Association

There is no such thing as 'public housing' Our government does not own houses that they rent out, they are not in the housing business. The nearest thing to 'public houses' is the example I gave you. Indeed, Homeless people can get into a priority list to get a house via a coorporation when they are in need.

Rents are only controlled in the sense that we have a legally set 'roof' for prices per quare meter for rent, this to prevent sharks (project developers) to over-price housing. They have done that in the past and it made it hard for people to find affordable housing in cities, which resulted in too many empty houses in the cities while there were many people looking for a place to live.

For the same reason, squatting houses is legal down here, when a house is empty for more than a year without it being used for anything, people have the right to squat those houses and use them for living.

You should know that the Netherlands is one of the most dense populated areas in the world (per aquare meter), leaving housing space empty is not considered a social thing to do down here. We do not have much space to build, a huge part of our country is artificially made by humans, we can not affort to just waste it.