Amsterdam city council is pressing ahead with plans to increase ground rent (erfpacht) paid by some home owners in line with inflation next year, the Parool reported this week.

The increase in 2023 will be based on 2022’s inflation rate and that is expected to be in the region of 8.6%, the paper said. In some cases, home owners will have to pay more than €1,000 a year more to use the land their property is built on.

Opposition councillors on Wednesday urged housing chief Reinier van Dantzig to put a ceiling of, say, 4% on the rise next year, to help people already faced with soaring energy costs.

‘We are doing everything we can to help lots of different groups in this crisis,’ Van Dantzig said. ‘But we also have a structural gap in the budget and have taken a conscious decision not to do anything extra about this. We also have a repayment system for people who get into acute difficulties.’

One group of people who built their own homes on council land in the east of the city told the paper they face rises of between €1,000 and €1,5000 a year, which will take the ground rent per property to more than €20,000 next year. ‘That is too much for anyone to afford,’ they told Van Dantzig in a written appeal.

Some 60,000 home owners in the capital pay ground rent to the city every year. In 2021, it added €146 million to the council coffers.