Housing Poverty

The aim of this project is to activate the underused houses for the private housing market (low budget segment). As a first step to reach this goal (for Belgium) we will start from an existing inventory of empty houses to define possible houses for the private renting market. On the other hand we are also thinking about involving residential care organizations to research the possibility of making houses from residence of these care organizations available for renting. The second step will be to develop a model to bring these underused buildings (back) on the rental market. The expectation is that many of these buildings are not immediately rentable. Small or big works (ranging from painting to larger renovations) need to be done so that the houses meet the countries housing standards. Probably, at the moment the circumstances (time, money, lack of a clear view on what’s necessary,…) prevent the owners to do these works. The project wants to develop, in cooperation with stakeholders and target groups, a model to assist the owners with the practical and financial aspects of executing these works/renovations. These models will be tested in pilot-projects. Possible pilots will be a concept in which the tenant (in exchange of reduced or exemption of rent) or an organization (in exchange of receiving (part of)the rent) will execute/finance the renovations. Other pilots could be to test a cooperation framework between owner, tenant and vocational education institutes or social labor initiatives.

New methodologies to define empty houses for the rental market and different models to bring underused properties back on the rental market in collaboration with different stakeholders such as owner, tenant and vocational education institutes or social labor initiatives.

Increase in available, affordable and qualitative housing.

The problem of a lack of sufficient available, affordable and qualitative housing solutions is present in the whole 2 seas area. Experiments are held in each of these countries and 2 seas countries are already looking at how the problems are tackled in their neighboring countries. A model of consistently approaching the issue however is not present and regulations regarding quality, repurposing and splitting-up buildings vary.