UP

Making old social housing more circular and affordable

Traditionally, outdated houses with excessive renovation costs are taken out of rent and sold on the public market. There, scarcity drives up housing prices quite a bit. This does not make it easy for single people or families with limited financial resources to acquire their own homes. And if they do succeed, they often do not have the means to renovate the house sustainably. 

With the UP project, Cordium wants to change this. We will look for new legal and financial solutions to sell outdated social housing affordable to the target group. In doing so, we focus on ensuring that, firstly, they are renovated in an energetic and change-oriented way, secondly, they can be sustainably maintained and repaired and thirdly, they retain their social housing function, several cycles in a row. 

Once the legal and financial bottlenecks are resolved, our long-term goal is to effectively renovate the 32 houses from this pilot project in a circular way and transfer them to the intended target group. The concept may then find applications outside social housing to offer families the opportunity to acquire a sustainable and circular home.

Key results

Key lessons learned
  1. We drew up a legal and financial model that makes it possible for the target audience to acquire a qualitative and energetic home, namely through a legally framed long lease construction. We tested this with the target audience. 
  2. We worked out circular renovation scenarios in which obsolete, run-down social housing is upcycled and which offer flexibility in terms of housing types and phasing of renovation. Moreover, they fit within the budget of the target group. 
  3. During the project, a number of obstacles threatened to surface due to policy decisions. Thanks to the solid knowledge and competences within the partnership, we solved these. 
  4. Thanks to the legal construction set up for the sale of the social housing, we can virtually guarantee that the homes will be renovated in terms of quality and on time.
  1. In working out the legal and financial solutions, many obstacles emerged. For instance, due to a policy change, sale of run-down properties was no longer possible. Thanks to the knowledge and competences within our team, we were able to solve this. 
  2. Thanks to our worked-out solutions, we avoid demolishing homes and can upcycle run-down homes into high-quality, affordable homes in a circular way without losing their social function. 
  3. Thanks to these legal and financial solutions, our target group is very interested in energetic housing, an option that is otherwise often overlooked because it is not affordable. 
  4. The role of politics and government is very decisive for such innovative solutions. For instance, it turned out that Flemish loans were not allowed to be applied in our construction, which weakened our proposal. Through targeted questions to various policymakers, we were able to clear this up.

What will the future bring? 

Through this project, solutions were sought and found. Legal difficulties were raised with policymakers and cleared. During the various presentations and discussions, the explicit interest of various parties also became clear. 

We are now making every effort to realise a scalable project and effectively upcycle the 32 homes on offer according to the elaborated principle. We are looking for the necessary support and resources to test out this project in reality, thus showing the market that the elaborated model is a great added value.

Cordium

Partners Onesto Kredietmaatschappij, PAQT, Advocaten en Belcare

Topics Levers: Legal › Financial › Business Models › Societal › Just Transition ›

Website

http://www.cordium.be

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