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2016
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Housing in Brussels: diagnosis and challenges

Notes de la rédaction

Dit is het persbericht over het artikel van Christian Dessouroux, Rachida Bensliman, Nicolas Bernard, Sarah De Laet, François Demonty, Pierre Marissal and Johan Surkyn, gepubliceerd op June 6, 2016. Read the article.

Housing plays an important role in everybody’s life. It is the place where we live, the anchor point of family life, a private space bearing social and emotional values, and the almost indispensible condition for administrative registration and therefore of civic participation. Housing is also an economic property which is purchased or rented, and is exchanged on a market influenced by supply and demand. The issue of the financial accessibility of housing and its ability to meet needs lies at the crossroads of these uses and interests, which are not necessarily easy to reconcile.

For the past twenty years, the housing market in Brussels has been tense – a corollary of its demographic vitality. A large number of people live in inadequate housing. The significant number of new or renovated dwellings constitute a powerful vector in the transformation of the city, at urbanistic as well as social level. Real estate operations also convey the interests and modes of action of the various groups of stakeholders: developers, owners, tenants and public authorities. Among the latter, the Region is now mainly in charge, as most housing issues are under the remit of the Regions.

In order to review the strategic issue of housing in Brussels, the Brussels Studies Institute formed a multidisciplinary team of French- and Dutch-speaking researchers led by Christian Dessouroux, geographer at Université libre de Bruxelles. Their synopsis highlights various facets of the housing problem in Brussels through different approaches (demographic, legal, political and sociological). It does not constitute an exhaustive state of knowledge regarding housing, but presents a panorama of current knowledge and challenges. It highlights the different dimensions of the issue and contextualises, explains the controversies and debates, and points out the main challenges for the future.

Several observations emerge from this work. The first one concerns the difficulty in identifying the demand. As an (inter)national centre of attraction, Brussels attracts a large number of people from diverse backgrounds, the vast majority of whom are registered in the municipal civil registry ('de jure'resident population). But another substantial part is not included in this statistical source, which leads to an underestimation of the de facto resident population, i.e. the one which represents the actual housing demand in Brussels.

The second observation concerns the strong social hierarchy of the housing market. In addition tothose who are able to find a dwelling which corresponds to their needs, a growing proportion of households do not have the necessary financial resources to enter or evolve on the property market. Given the continuing shortage of social housing and the lack of regulation of the private segment, the Brussels market is currently unprotected against the growing inequalities of access to proper housing.

More and more concessions are being made in terms of comfort, size and location. This has increased the phenomenon of overcrowding and has reinforced certain alternative or restrictive ways of living together, such as joint tenancy, grouped settlements, living in someone else’s home, squats, etc. While the phenomenon affects the Region as a whole to varying degrees, this lack of fitness for habitation tends to be concentrated in the 'poor area' and, to a lesser extent, in the west of the city. For some people, leaving Brussels is the only possible alternative in order to escape the high prices and poor living conditions.

While the inequalities of access to housing are the object of public debate and are often on the political agenda, private stakeholders nevertheless continue to play an essential role in production. Public management of the insufficiently solvent demand is still much too hesitant and lacking in innovation to meet the urgent need for affordable housing. The question is also raised as to the arbitration between social housing and assistance for the development of average housing or for home ownership.

Issues such as the targeting of public investments, the implementation of mechanisms for market control, collaboration of stakeholders and land use regulation give rise to complex and interdependent urbanistic, socioeconomic and political challenges. Although these challenges are better explained today, they must be dealt with quickly.

Om dit artikel te citeren
Dessouroux, Christian, Bensliman, Rachida, Bernard, Nicolas, Laet, Sacha, Demonty, François, Marissal, Pierre and Surkyn, Johan, “Housing in Brussels: diagnosis and challenges”, Brussels Studies [Online], Algemene collectie, nr. 99, 6 juin 2016. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/brussels/1353
Contact
Benjamin Wayens, redactiesecretaris: bwayens[at]brusselsstudies.be

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