Liberal democratic party D66 has proposed an emergency housing law to permit house sharing – without any loss of benefits – in order to solve half of the housing shortage

During the post-budget political debates, leader Rob Jetten proposed that the caretaker government and parliament work together to pass law on housing before the next government is formed.

The Netherlands is currently estimated to have a shortage of more than 400,000 houses due to a historic lack of building under four Rutte governments, an increase in single-person households and population growth mainly due to working immigrants.

Jetten said that parliament can address half of this shortage with a simple emergency law. “Today and tomorrow, we can agree on an emergency housing law,” he said. “With a few simple measures we can actually ensure we help more than 200,000 people in the Netherlands get a house – and the core of this is to make house sharing easier by scrapping excessive rules that restrict house building and make it impossible for people to share an apartment or house.”

Eddy von Hijum, head of the New Social Contract party, proposed making a law that all landlords should be registered with their local municipality, as in parts of the United Kingdom, to encourage good landlordship and make it easier to tackle exploitation and fraud.

With the exception of a contribution by Geert Wilders, whose PVV collapsed the last government, the tone in the two-day debate was as much about coalition building as criticism of other parties’ policies. Jetten and Frans Timmermans, leader of the GroenLinks/PvdA left wing party, talked about trying to form a new government by the end of the year, after elections on October 29.

While there were few questions for the government and finance minister – normally the function of the debate to scrutinise the budget – some parties did face challenges. Henri Bontenbal, leader of the Christian democratic CDA and rising in the polls, faced critical questions on his proposal for a “freedom levy”, an extra tax for defence based on an Estonian model.

The debate continues on Thursday. Polls suggest that housing is the biggest concern for voters.