9,000 households in the Brussels region currently benefit from rent assistance, announced the city's Secretary of State on Housing Nawal Ben Hamou on Wednesday.
The number has skyrocketed from just 400 households in 2021, with a renewed and simplified scheme launched in October of that year. The city has also been making more of an effort to communicate with those concerned, said Nawal Ben Hamou in explanation of the rise.
Ben Hamou added that according to official projections, there are still 3,000 households eligible for this financial aid who are yet to apply.
Rental assistance is a monthly benefit intended for tenants who are on the waiting list for social housing. A household can receive between €120 and €173 per month and an additional €20 to €43 per child.
A third of the 9,000 households are single-parent families. The CPAS, the housing service of the communes and NGOs, have helped families to submit their files, the Secretary of State mentioned.
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Delays persist despite rent aid reforms
Rent assistance in Brussels was reformed in 2021 because of the complicated application process and the long list of criteria it imposed on applicants. Since the reform, candidates no longer have to provide all the necessary documents themselves and semi-automatic data processing has been introduced.
Even so, last year there was a delay in the payment of aid for several months and a backlogged waiting list. In September last year, Ben Hamou said that the housing service was receiving up to 300 new requests per day, but that over 3,500 files had been rejected out of the 12,280 applications received since March 2022. Half of the applications are rejected for surpassing the income threshold.
