Eindhoven

A Dutch wooncoöperatie (housing cooperative) is an association of residents that manages, and sometimes owns, the building they live in. There are two forms. In a beheerwooncoöperatie (management cooperative) the members run their homes while a housing association remains the owner. In a vastgoedwooncoöperatie (property cooperative) the members develop or buy the building themselves. Eindhoven's first planned project takes the second route. Its future residents will own the building jointly and rent their flats back from their own cooperative, which the developers describe as a form between buying and renting. A 2025 Eindhoven University of Technology study of Dutch cooperative policy compares both forms across every level of government, and a typology of collaborative-housing property regimes shows how many hybrids sit between them.

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Strengthening Cooperative Housing in the Netherlands - A Multi-Level Policy Analysis in Comparative Perspective

Eindhoven University of Technology study of Dutch cooperative policy.

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The city's cooperative instinct was absorbed early by its employers and associations. Philips built Philipsdorp between 1910 and 1923 as a planned workers' village of 771 homes. Civic and church-based housing societies followed. Trudo began as a woningvereniging (a members' housing society) in 1916. In 1994 it merged with the municipal housing company to form the professional association that exists today. Member control gave way to professional management, which is why Eindhoven has large non-profit landlords but no cooperative sector to speak of.

Today's cooperative landscape is therefore a set of beginnings, in three clusters. The first is the associations themselves, whose tenants' councils are the nearest thing to member voice in the existing stock. The second is new-build resident groups such as Salix, a tower planned for Park Meerland whose residents will form the cooperative before they move in. The third is small collective self-build: CPO projects (collectief particulier opdrachtgeverschap, groups commissioning their own homes), woongroepen (shared-living groups) and care clusters. All three meet the same two walls, land and finance, but the newcomers hit them hardest because they have no balance sheet. Demand is not the constraint. A survey-based study of demand for Dutch cooperatives finds appetite far beyond today's supply, and a TU Delft mapping of collaborative housing records hundreds of projects that show the form works.

The municipality now names cooperatives in its housing policy for the first time. The revised housing programme for 2026 to 2030 lists wooncoöperaties among the collective forms it will support, through a website and a named contact point at the city. It also promises to examine whether initiatives aimed at social or mid-market rent can borrow with a municipal loan guarantee. That is support in knowledge rather than land or money so far. A Housing Europe review of collaborative housing argues that the step from pilots to a steady supply of land is what lets such groups scale, and that step is still ahead of Eindhoven.

Housing sits at the centre of Eindhoven's new city government. PRO (the local branch of the merged GreenLeft and Labour party), the CDA (Christian Democrats) and D66 (social liberals) renewed their coalition in June 2026 with 29 of the 45 council seats. Their agreement, Samen vooruit, Samen Thuis (Together forward, together at home), promises 21,500 new homes in four years, 72% of them affordable. People in essential jobs in care, education and public safety get priority. A construction fund set up with banks is meant to restart stalled projects. Mieke Verhees of PRO stays on as alderman for housing.

Beneath the headline sits a harder number. The revised housing programme keeps the city's ambition that 85% of new homes be affordable, with 30% social rent. Commercial partners asked for a lower bar, and the programme now lets towers above 70 metres and some neighbourhood projects fall back to the coalition's lower floor. The scale is set with the region. Eindhoven must deliver or start 23,500 homes and about 1,700 student rooms by 2030, 11,500 of them in two NOVEX areas (sites the national government has designated for large-scale housebuilding). The city's own record is sobering: about 60% of planned homes are completed in the year they were scheduled.

The levers are split between The Hague, the province and the region. On 1 July 2026 the Wet versterking regie volkshuisvesting (the Act to Strengthen Public Direction of Housing) took effect. It requires two-thirds of new homes to be affordable, with a fixed share of social rent in each housing region, and every municipality must publish a housing programme by 1 July 2027. Regionally, the 2024 Beethoven agreement (a national and regional package to keep Brainport's chip industry growing) ties public money to extra homes. The province has warned that 5,100 of the 17,000 Beethoven homes may not be built because the associations cannot invest enough, a risk set out in regional reporting on the Beethoven homes. The housing minister, Elanor Boekholt-O'Sullivan, is a former top military officer, and a Guardian profile describes her push for speed over polish.

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Bijna een derde van de Beethoven-woningen staat op de tocht

Provincial warning that 5,100 Beethoven homes are at risk.

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Cooperatives are getting their own legal lane. On 30 June 2026 the Tweede Kamer (the lower house of parliament) passed the Wet bevordering wooncoöperaties (the Housing Cooperatives Promotion Act), a private member's bill by the Socialist Party MP Sandra Beckerman. It writes both cooperative forms into the Housing Act, and municipalities that adopt cooperative policy must record it in their new housing programme. The Eerste Kamer (the senate) has yet to vote. The province of Noord-Brabant already pays for the first steps: since June 2025 collective housing initiatives can receive up to €27,500 for a feasibility study, from a yearly pot of €600,000.

The strongest local lever is land. Eindhoven buys land and keeps it, selling only to housing associations at the low end of its price range, and uses leasehold to keep a say over later sales. Rik Thijs, then a GroenLinks alderman, explained the approach in an interview that also features The Hague. Research on public-cooperative partnerships shows why that land lever matters most for groups without capital.

From our library

Land Policy in Practice: A Tale of Two Dutch Cities

Interview on active land policy with Eindhoven and The Hague aldermen.

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Empty buildings are part of the answer. Eindhoven created 405 homes by converting existing buildings in 2024, the second-highest total in the country after Rotterdam, according to the national statistics office's conversion survey. The housing programme promises to make adding storeys, extensions and conversions easier. It sets clear rules for splitting large homes, and it commits the city to study a leegstandsverordening (a local vacancy bylaw that lets the city require owners to report long-empty buildings). Splitting echoes a national study of better use of existing homes, and a transformation meter for offices gives a tested way to judge which empty blocks can become homes. Around the station, the city holds a right of first purchase over the 55 hectares of Knoop XL. Under the Wet voorkeursrecht gemeenten (the municipal pre-emption act), owners there must offer land to the municipality before anyone else.

Climate goals ride on the same buildings. The coalition wants a green deal with the 10 largest carbon emitters in the city and will green 10 squares and 50 streets. The city's housing innovation agenda aims to build 10% of new homes with innovative methods up to 2030. The programme also ties the heat transition to the building schedule so that grid congestion, a full electricity network that cannot connect new buildings, does not stall projects. A review of circular and biobased construction by TU/e and 4TU, the federation of Dutch technical universities, maps the materials and material passports that make such targets realistic. Non-profit landlords, and cooperatives that plan for decades, are the natural carriers of that shift.

Salix is the project that will show whether a cooperative can take root in Eindhoven. A municipal jury chose it unanimously in 2024 for a site on the edge of Park Meerland, in the west of the city near the airport. The tower stacks four “neighbourhoods” of about 15 homes each, and every one has a shared room and a shared terrace. Most floors and all partition walls are timber and other biobased materials. The insulating facade panels are almost entirely straw and wood, finished with reclaimed timber from Brabant pig barns. The architects calculate that the building stores more carbon than it emits, a net −60 kg of CO₂ per square metre. Residents will choose their own layouts before the cooperative lets the homes back to them.

Philipsdorp was the city's first large answer to a housing shortage caused by an employer's growth. Its blocks of joined houses, laid out by G.J. de Jongh and designed by L. Kooken, Cornelis Smit and K.P.C. de Bazel, still read as one village more than a century on. It has been renovated and is protected as heritage. It proves that an employer, not only a government, can plan an entire neighbourhood around the people it needs.

Strijp-S is the factory complex that Philips left behind. The land was sold in 2002 for €140 million to a partnership between the city and the builder VolkerWessels. The first permanent residents arrived in 2012, and a year later two former television factories reopened as loft buildings named Anton and Sergio after members of the Philips family. Trudo has its head office there, in the Matchbox building. It also sells homes through Slimmer Kopen, a discounted route into ownership that sits in the city's performance agreements with the associations, as their federation Aedes reports.

Project Milestone is the city's laboratory for building faster. In April 2021 a couple moved into the first of five 3D-printed concrete houses in Bosrijk, near Meerhoven. The university's own magazine called it the world's first 3D-printed concrete home ready for occupancy. The house was assembled from 24 concrete elements printed layer by layer in Eindhoven. The partners were Eindhoven University of Technology, the builder Van Wijnen, the landlord Vesteda, Saint-Gobain Weber Beamix, Witteveen+Bos and the municipality. Its lesson feeds the city's goal of building more homes with new methods.

Woonbedrijf is the region's largest landlord, with 34,764 homes across seven municipalities. Its student department, Vestide, lets rooms to students, and describes keeping a large stock of affordable student housing as its main contribution to the city. In a region that recruits talent from all over the world, those rooms are the first Eindhoven address for many newcomers.

Wooninc. and Woonstichting 'thuis complete the group of associations that sign performance agreements with the city and its tenants' councils. Those agreements cover social rent, mid-market rent, ownership products, sustainability and care. They are the practical channel through which the city's social-rent target turns into buildings.

The Lighthouse tower, opened in October 2025, is the counterpoint at the top of the market. It holds 333 private rental apartments and is now the tallest building in Eindhoven. It shows how fast the market can build upwards. Salix, Philipsdorp and the association homes show how the city can also build for people on ordinary incomes, and for the long term.