2023-12-27 13:33:00
From 2025, in Flanders, candidates for social housing who work will have priority over others. The Flemish Minister of Housing, Matthias Diependaele (N-VA) obtained the green light from his government to put this new measure in place.
This one, and others. Working social tenants will benefit from a bonus of up to 2,500 euros, which will be paid to them when they move from the social rental market to the private sector. Unemployed social tenants (and unemployed candidates for social housing) will have to follow a professional integration program under the supervision of the VDAB, the Flemish employment office. And all lease contracts will now have a limited duration of 9 years (which was only the case for leases signed after 2017).
Flanders is therefore tightening the conditions of access to social housing. The reasoning ? Since social rents increase according to income, this does not encourage you to increase your income. “The prospect of lower rent and lifelong social housing discourages people from looking for work“, said the minister. In other words, social housing constitutes a sort of employment trap.
Employment trap
“There is no job trap”reacts the economist Philippe Defeyt, former Ecolo president of the CPAS of Namur, and president of the social housing company The joy of home. “Indeed, your rent increases if your income increases, this is the very principle of social housing. But it does not increase to the point of erasing the benefit of going to work. The increase in social rent plays a marginal role, compared to the loss of benefits, or the price of childcare, for example.”
To justify his decision, Minister Diependaele cites figures: “Only 55% of social tenants able to work actually work”. Et : “According to a study by the Flemish housing support center Steunpunt Wonen (which has not yet been published, editor’s note), unemployed social tenants have 26% less chance of finding a job than private tenants..”
In Wallonia, we do not have similar statistics, but we can say that less than 20% of heads of households in social housing work. In Brussels, the figure is around 15%.
“But it’s not because we’re in social housing that we’re not going to go to work.says Philippe Defeyt. It’s the opposite. We have difficulty finding work and, as a result, we find ourselves in social housing. !”
Pol Zimmer also struggles to understand this priority given to workers. He is the author of a book on housing policies in Brusselsformer director of the studies and strategy department of the Housing Company of the Brussels-Capital Region (SLRB), and former advisor to the cabinet of Didier Gossuin (DéFI) and Christos Doulkeridis (Ecolo). “It is in Flanders that the rental market is the narrowest in Belgium, proportionally. There are almost 80% of owner-occupiers, and it is the region with the lowest unemployment rate.. From the outside, this does not seem extremely necessary as a measure. As housing minister, he could act at other levels. I wonder about such a measure as the elections approach.”
“No one suddenly becomes an executive in a bank”
As for the duration of lease contracts, it is also limited to 9 years in Wallonia and Brussels, but only for leases signed after the change in regulations. In Brussels, for example, contracts were of indefinite duration until 2012.”Since then, every 9 years, social housing companies are supposed to check that a household’s income does not exceed a certain level. If this is the case, the household must vacate their accommodation within 6 months.”
In 2022, it was the first year in which this evaluation had to be done. And, according to Pol Zimmer, the number of people affected was paltry, “This measure has no impact.
“No one suddenly becomes an executive in a bank! points out Philippe Defeyt. Let’s be clear, there are no executives in the social housing sector.” This is evidenced by the diagram below, which can be found in a study on the profile of social housing tenants from the Center for Sustainable Housing Studies in Walloniawhich represents the evolution of the distribution of heads of household tenants of social housing according to their socio-professional category from 2002 to 2021 in Wallonia.
1703714249
#Social #housing #Flanders #give #priority #workers #Brussels #Wallonia #follow #suit