Communication of 4 June 2025 to the European Parliament

I am here at the request of theEuropean Free Thought Association [AEPL] as aexpert in housing assistanceand as Chairman of the association Solidarité Logement.

Solidarité Logement is a non-profit association established under Belgian law in 2009. Its aim is to provide housing for two target audiences very much in line with today's issues :

• the young people aged 16 to 25 who are experiencing difficult transitions to independence, often with broken family ties, vulnerable and without resources; and
• the isolated womenThese women, with or without children, are even more precarious and vulnerable when they have been subjected to physical and psychological violence.

The real specificity of our association is to literally create housing for these beneficiaries. On this subject, let me digress for a moment to say how much I agree with Mr Gonçalvez, who spoke without the first panel and who insisted on renovating the existing housing stock, which is insalubrious and/or unoccupied, as opposed to constructing new buildings. In the 15 years of our existence, we have created more than 50 housing units for around 200 beneficiaries a year. Once the housing units have been made available, we work with specialist associations to support our beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are selected according to ethical criteria and total neutrality.

As our association is only active in Belgium, I have gathered information from a number of sources in order to put today's intervention at the level of the European Union. One of these sources is a document issued by the European Commission last year.

These are :

Social Housing and beyond.

An operational toolkit on the use of EU funds for investments in social housing and associated services".

This document, published under the aegis of Nicolas Schmit, then European Commissioner for Employment and Social Rights, is very comprehensive and stresses the following points the importance of services associated with the social housing dynamic. He makes a very useful observation for today's debate. It can be summarised as follows:

• House prices in the European Union rose by 48% between 2010 and 2023,
• Rental income amounted to 23%,
• In 2022, 8.7% of the Union's population spent 40% (or more) of their income on housing,
• At the same time, inflation and rising interest rates have had a considerable impact on rents and mortgages,
• Unaffordable housing in turn has an impact on social inclusion and participation in education and the labour market.

While the primary responsibility for investment policies in affordable social housing lies with the Member States, it is no less true that EU policy and funding instruments have a significant impact on the housing ecosystem in general and social housing in particular.

The document sets out a range of measures to promote social and affordable housing for the period 2021-2027. To this end, it reviews all the EU funds available to support investment in social housing and related services over this period. We can certainly not say that the Union is taking the subject lightly Between the European Regional Development Fund and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, no fewer than 9 plans and programmes are directly or indirectly relevant to the issues we are dealing with. These funds and programmes are all financed by the EU budget, but differ in the way they are managed. There are three types of management:

• Direct management: EU funding is managed directly by the European Commission,
• shared management: the Commission and the national authorities jointly manage funding; and finally
• indirect management: funding is managed by partner organisations or other authorities within or outside the EU.

Secondly, this document analyses in detail no less than 19 projects and actions that have been carried out as part of the 2014-2020 programme, some of which are still being implemented or expanded. What has caught our attention is that these projects have been categorised along two axes:

• approach based on geographical locationThe focus is more on the territorial aspect;
• the person-based approach: the focus is placed on a single target group very specific.

Our experience on the ground shows that the two main factors in the success of our action - apart, of course, from the creation of housing - are :

• deliberately focusing on a well-defined target audience. With insecurity everywhere and of all kinds, it is imperative that we stay within the scope of our corporate purpose.
• support for beneficiaries until they are fully independent, provided by specialist associations in the same public of beneficiaries (young people in difficulty, women, single people, migrants, MENA, etc.). Commissioner Brunner said this earlier, but it's important to repeat again and again that social housing is not just about bricks.

To illustrate this, I'll take one of the 19 projects mentioned above. This is a project at Antwerp in 2017-2019. This involves the co-housing of young unaccompanied refugees, particularly those who reach adulthood (17-22 years) and lose the accommodation allocated to them as minors. This operation was a great success (75 co-housing units at an average rent of €250 for a period of 1 to 3 years) because - among other things - :

• The project went further than pure accommodation: co-housing with young Flemish people from Antwerp, education and language courses, social networking, psychological counselling and access to employment;
• it was supported by a number of recognised local associations active in the empowerment sectors mentioned above.

In our opinion, this project could be taken as a model for the future because it combines all the factors for success.

I would like to make it clear that our association was not involved in this project.

By way of conclusion, and perhaps I should have started my speech there, if we are all equal before the law (I remind you of the European Convention on Human Rights), the same is clearly not true when it comes to housing. Let's all work together to reduce this inequality.

Thank you for your attention,

Didier Giblet

Chairman of Solidarité Logement

Housing expert for AEPL