Many of the 2,000 modular housing units commissioned by the housing ministry for €200 million last year are ending up in storage because housing corporations and town councils are not willing to utilise them, the Financieele Dagblad said on Wednesday.

In total, the state property service Rijksvastgoedbedrijf is still looking to place 800 of the homes which were ordered in December and 100 are currently in storage near Utrecht, the paper said. 

‘It is a real shame that local authorities in particular are not being very decisive about taking the homes,’ Harry van Zandwijk, from modular housing builder Daiwa House, told the paper.

The government says that building tens of thousands of temporary homes is the quickest way of solving the housing shortage. But local authorities are concerned about local protests and housing corporations have doubts about whether they can cover their costs, the paper said. 

The cabinet has a target of creating 37,500 temporary housing units by the end of 2024. The homes, which are meant to be stacked on top of each other, are aimed at people who need to find somewhere to live quickly, such as students, refugees with residency permits and people who are getting divorced and need to move house. 

Housing minister Hugo de Jonge is now trying to overcome the problems by providing financial guarantees and still expects a ‘full matching’ of sites and homes this year, the FD said.