Insecure tenure in Amsterdam: who rents with a temporary lease, and why? A baseline from 2015

Given that insecure leases impact negatively on ontological security and subjective well-being, and given increasing pressure on European housing markets, more insight into insecure leases is timely. In this article, we assess the occurrence of temporary leases in the city of Amsterdam in 2015, and explore the characteristics of the tenants. We employ hitherto underused local survey data (N = 17,803). Although permanent contracts are still dominant, the majority of young adults aged 18-23 are renters with a temporary lease. Students, those with a Western migration background, those who moved because their previous rental contract was terminated or because the previous dwelling was too expensive, and those who moved from abroad were particularly likely to have a temporary lease. Families were unlikely to have a temporary lease. Given recent developments - in 2016 temporary leases were legally established as a regular tenure in the Netherlands - the number of temporary leases may increase sharply from the reported baseline of 2015.