Why Amsterdam Is No Longer Livable for the Middle Class
July 22, 2026 · Frisian News
Housing costs in Amsterdam have doubled in a decade. Teachers, nurses, and skilled trades workers are leaving the city they can no longer afford.
A nursing student in Amsterdam now spends a large share of a starter's salary on rent. Apartment prices have risen sharply in recent years. These numbers tell the real story: Amsterdam is no longer a city for people who do the work.
Amsterdam's housing market stopped serving locals around 2010. Foreign investors poured in after the financial crisis, betting on Dutch stability. Holiday rental platforms, particularly Airbnb, converted thousands of residential units into short-term tourist accommodation. The city council did little to stop this. Tax breaks for investors, zoning rules that favored development over affordable housing, and weak enforcement against illegal rentals created a perfect storm. Landlords discovered they could earn significantly more from tourists than from local renters.
The City of Amsterdam calls itself progressive. Its housing chief has published reports acknowledging the crisis. But acknowledgment is not action. Between 2015 and 2024, the city lost a significant number of residential units to tourist conversion. New construction often targets luxury apartments, not affordable homes. When the city finally imposed stricter regulations on holiday rentals in 2023, enforcement was slow and fines were low enough that many landlords simply paid the penalty and kept renting to tourists. Wealthy residents in the canal belt blocked zoning changes that would have allowed more density in their neighborhoods. The middle class had no lobby.
The exodus started with teachers. A secondary school instructor cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment at current rents. Then nurses left, then electricians, then police officers. These are not poverty cases; these are skilled workers with good incomes. The city imported migrant workers to fill the gaps because it was cheaper than raising wages or building housing. This created a labor shortage that pushed wages up for some sectors, worsened shortages in others. Amsterdam's own growth strategy, touted as progressive, has hollowed out its working and middle class.
Amsterdam is now a city for the rich, the very poor (housed by welfare), and transient workers. The class that built the city, raised children there, and paid taxes is gone. No amount of progressive rhetoric changes that fact.
Published July 22, 2026 · Frisian News