Abstract
Flanders has a relatively small but well targeted social housing stock. Social housing policy has been fairly stable since the devolvement of housing policy from the Belgian state to the regions in the 1980s. As such, Flanders did not follow the trends that were observed internationally in social housing finance and provision, e.g. towards privatization and replacing object subsidies by subject subsidies. However, things may change. Today, Flemish social housing is facing one of the most important reforms in its history. In 2023, the Social Housing Associations (SHAs) and Social Rental Agencies (SRAs) have to merge into ‘Housing Companies’. The reform includes a radical redistribution of the working areas of the social housing providers, and will be accompanied by a reform of the allocation rules. In addition, a new finance mechanism is implemented aiming to subsidise private developers for building social and affordable housing. In this policy review, we describe these policy changes within the historical and international context, and discuss the reactions from stakeholders and researchers. We conclude that the policy changes will probably not alter the conclusion about the somewhat exceptional evolution of Flemish social housing within the international context, but need to be followed with care, as the access of social housing for vulnerable groups may become more difficult, could lead to a further slowdown of social housing investments and to a less cost-effective allocation of subsidies.
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Notes
Apart from these main providers there is a small number of social rental dwellings let by two organisations (Vlabinvest and the Flemish Housing Fund) and municipalities.
The most detailed comparative work of the last decade on social housing is from Scanlon e.a. (2015), which brings together contributions for 12 countries, but not for Belgium. In addition, there was the special issue ‘Social Housing after the Global Financial Crisis: New Trends across Europe’ of the journal Critical Housing Analyse, to which De Decker et al. (2017) contributed for Belgium.
At the time of writing (June 2023), the new regulation has not yet been definitively approved by the Flemish Government.
Based on survey data for 2018. EU-SILC data for more recent years do not show a significant change.
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The author receives funding from the Flemish government for conducting research on housing and housing policy, but received no funding for writing this article.
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Winters, S. Turbulent times for flemish social housing. J Hous and the Built Environ 38, 2659–2668 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-023-10063-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-023-10063-9