During the past three years 482 social housing tenants in our region have been found to own property abroad. Anyone that owns a property, be here in Belgium or abroad is not entitled to social housing.
According to figures released by the Flemish Housing Minister Mathias Diependaele (nationalist) checks on the region’s social housing tenants have found that almost 500 of them owned a property abroad. The figures form the basis of an article in Wednesday’s edition of the daily ‘Het Laatste Nieuws’
Since March 2021, 482 social tenants have been caught with property abroad. Anyone renting social housing in Flanders is not allowed to own property be it at home or abroad. Since March 2021 checks have been carried out to ensure that those that live in social housing are not flouting the rule banning them from owing a property. Housing associations have carried out 941 such checks. In 482 cases the tenant was found to own property abroad. Most of the property ownership investigations were carried out in Turkey (233), Morocco (157) and Italy (56).
Those found to have flouted the home ownership ban have to refund the amount to which their rent is below the market rate in full and/or vacate the social housing property in which they live. This can soon mount up as on average social housing costs 340 euro/month. This is 500 euro/month less than the average market rent. This means that a person that has lived in social housing for 5 years while owning a property abroad would be liable to pay back an average of 30,000 euro.
So far, a total of 2.7 million euro has been recuperated in this way. In 180 cases the courts have not yet ruled so this figure is expected to increase.