Samenvatting

The Dutch social housing sector is still recovering from a series of incidents that harmed the sector’s reputation drastically. Part of the recovery plan is the installation of an independent Housing Authority, who focuses specifically upon the ‘governance’ of housing corporations. This article explores the implementation and development of the Authority’s regulation strategy. It finds that although the strategy sharpens the focus of housing corporations and limits risky circumstances and behavior, it also triggers adverse effects. The Authority should therefore adopt a broader outlook, that is more sensitive to (1) the complexity of the social housing task, and (2) the pathologies of multiple accountabilities being placed upon the corporation(sector).