“Visvliet Village Comes Together to Buy Homes and Keep Young People from Leaving”

“All my friends live here, I’ve lived there almost all my life, I have everything here.” Frank Jansing (25) is looking for his own home in Visvliet, a village of less than 300 inhabitants. Not everyone understands that, and Frank understands that, but he wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

But it’s not that easy. Frank has been registered with housing construction for about a year and a half now and buying a house is difficult, so he still lives with his parents. There is not often something for sale, and even less often something affordable for a starter on the housing market.

‘Never no nagging’

But there is hope. Last week it became known that villagers buy three houses together. A special experiment. Houses that were actually going to be demolished, because the housing corporation had decided that the houses in the small village with few amenities were not worth the investment.

“Just cozy”, Frank describes his village. “Everyone knows each other, everyone is friendly. Never no nagging. That.”

It is exactly the atmosphere that Visvliet would like to maintain, says Jan Hut, one of the initiators of the buy-out and chairman of the Visvliet Vitaal Foundation. “It is a very active village, with more than ten different associations and foundations.”

Like Frank, many young people who want to live in Visvliet are on the housing corporation’s waiting list, says Hut. “But a young couple in Visvliet is, so to speak, on a waiting list for five years and is eventually offered a rental home in the region. Visvliet then loses these involved people. We would like to keep these people.”

That is why the village has one requirement for the tenants of the three houses: they must be active for the village. No problem for Frank, he is one of the regular bartenders at the village hall and a member of the Youth Activities Committee, which organizes, for example, the frikandellen eating competition and the game ‘Come into the village unseen’.

The Visvliet Vitaal Foundation, which will soon be renting out the houses, recently circulated a letter through the village. If you were interested in one of the houses, you had to send an email. Frank is one of nine interested parties who have made themselves heard. So that’s going to be exciting.

The rent of the houses will probably amount to about 650 euros per month, low enough to apply for housing benefit. Ten residents have already said they are willing to help pay for the homes as an investment. 5000 euros or a multiple thereof. Jan Hut: “We need a total of 142,000 euros to buy the homes. We also want to refurbish them and make them more sustainable.”

All in all, that will take some time. Frank waits hopefully and patiently.

Young people leave the village

From Zeeland to Groningen, quality of life is under pressure in more Dutch villages. Schools, shops and other facilities are disappearing and young people are leaving. Some of them want to continue living in ‘their’ village, but there are hardly any affordable options.

A village that buys up houses, like Visvliet, doesn’t happen that often. The solution is often to buy a piece of land with a group of home seekers and have a few houses built together in a cheap way, this is called collective private commissioning (CPO).