Urgent Measures Needed to Address the Unprecedented Housing Crisis in Wallonia: Memorandum from Real Estate Industry Leaders

2023-09-02 08:50:17

The actors of the real estate sector sent to the Walloon government, this Thursday, a memorandum in which they ask “the implementation, without delay, of concrete measures to stop an unprecedented housing crisis. »

The initiative is signed by Embuild (formerly Construction Confederation), Federia (Federation of French-speaking real estate agents), the French-speaking Council of Fednot (Federation of notaries), UPSI (Professional Union of the Real Estate Sector) and UWA (Union Wallonne des Architectes), supported by the Institute for Sustainable Development, the Center for Sustainable Housing Studies and the UCM.

According to these professionals, the Walloons have lost 50% of their real estate purchasing power in 4 years, the construction and renovation of a property having in particular become 25% more expensive over the last two years.

Worried regarding this development, the actors of the sector recommend a new vision of the housing policy guaranteeing all citizens accessibility to housing and supporting the energy transition. They then formulate a series of recommendations, including the development of public-private partnerships to strengthen the supply of quality housing at an affordable cost; the overhaul of urban planning charges to reduce the cost of construction; the improvement of the living environment in urban and rural centers or the gradual implementation in stages of measures to improve the energy performance of buildings, with in particular the modification of the rules relating to the PEB.

To achieve their objectives, the signatories of the memorandum rely on taxation, via innovative means of financing, and on governance in order to “put housing back at the heart of Walloon policies”.

“Faced with the reality of the climate challenge, we must more than ever adopt a realistic approach so that everyone has a chance to meet this real challenge. A pragmatic, progressive and transversal approach is more than ever necessary in order to correctly understand all the facets of this issue through the prisms of budgets (private and/or public), the right to decent housing, the necessary skilled employment , membership and social cohesion”, finally summed up Bernard Piron, the president of Embuild Wallonia.

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