The temporary homes are ready, but agreements with municipalities and housing corporations are taking longer than expected, Financieele Dagblad reported.

A spokesperson for housing minister Hugo de Jonge confirmed to FD that the government is looking for places to put over 800 of the 2,000 temporary homes it ordered in December.

“Dozens of conversations in various forms of concreteness are still ongoing” for at least those 800 homes, the spokesperson said. Many of them are currently kept in warehouses.

The homes ordered by the government often don’t meet the municipalities’ and corporations’ requirements. For example, the government ordered three-story stacked houses. But some cities only want ground-level homes or five-story high construction.

Housing corporations worry about operating risks. Temporary homes can stay in one place for 15 years. That is too short for corporations to break even on their investments. And there’s no guarantee that they can find a second location for the homes when the time comes to move them.

Finding buyers and placements for the prefab homes is turning out “more unruly than hoped,” De Jonge acknowledged.

“We delivered the first 84, and I am happy with that,” Harry van Zandwijk of flexible housing builder Daiwa House told FD. The government ordered 480 homes from the company. “We’ll store the rest until we get the signal to move.”