At the end of last year, Public Housing Minister Hugo de Jonge announced that people who had to make ends meet with an amount of up to 120 percent of the social minimum would receive a rent reduction.

They will pay a maximum of 575 euros per month. This concerns about half a million residents of housing company homes.

“data does not match”

Because of an error in the tax authorities, 11,000 families almost unfairly received this reduction in rent. Their income is “unknown,” but they appear in the systems as if they had a “low income,” he writes Norwegian Refugee Council.

They noticed the error at the Ymere housing company in Amsterdam. A spokesman for the newspaper said, “We have seen that the information transmitted by the Department of Taxes and Customs does not always agree with the data we have.”

“We reported this to the Tax and Customs Administration, as did two other companies. Then the IRS decided to put the brakes on.”

small defect

The families themselves have not yet been informed of the rent cut. A spokesman for De Jonge told the NRC newspaper that “the tax and customs department saw in time that there had been a small defect. It was rectified.”

The error could have been corrected. Tenants whose income is not known must now contact their housing association in order to be entitled to a rent reduction. This saves renters an average of 57 euros.

The Tax and Customs Department is investigating how the error occurred. Half a million tenants will get the rent reduction on schedule.