Brussels Social Housing Standoff: MR Freezes €131 Million Over Foyer Anderlechtois Chairman
Brussels has rebuilt its Grand-Place before. French artillery under Marshal Villeroy flattened most of the square in August 1695, and the guilds had their houses standing again within about four years (one of the façades still carries the date 1697 in big numerals). The region that governs the city around it needed 613 days after the June 2024 election just to agree on a government. Seven months into that government, one of its own parties has switched off the money for social housing.
On 3 September MR president Georges-Louis Bouchez said openly that his party had blocked the regional funding owed to the SLRB, the body that finances and supervises the city’s public housing companies. The sum is €131 million. That’s this year’s slice of the €400 million the coalition agreement promised the SLRB over the term, and it was due over the summer. The government has been sitting on it since the end of June. Bouchez named his condition plainly: the money stays put as long as Lotfi Mostefa chairs the Foyer anderlechtois.
Why One Chairman in Anderlecht Matters
The Foyer anderlechtois is the biggest social housing company in the region, with roughly 3,800 homes. An SLRB audit covering 2024 and 2025 turned up the sort of findings nobody likes to read. Of 261 invoices checked, 208 had gone through with no tender and no purchase order. Hundreds of tenants had fallen behind on rent and no reminders went out in 2024.
In May a VRT Pano documentary put allegations of clientelism in housing allocation on prime-time Flemish television. A judicial investigation is under way. A parliamentary inquiry followed too, and on 17 July the Brussels Parliament voted 26 recommendations for the whole sector while a special commissioner took over oversight at the Foyer.
Then on 17 August the board re-elected Mostefa, a PS politician, as chair. He hasn’t been charged with anything. For the liberals the vote was still a provocation, and their real target sits one level up. Ahmed Laaouej is both the regional minister for local authorities and leader of the Brussels PS. Cut the funding, the thinking goes, and he’ll have to let Mostefa go.
The minister-president, Boris Dilliès, is MR himself. He declined to comment. His office confirmed the funds stay frozen for now.
The Leverage Works Because the SLRB Is Weak
This is the uncomfortable part. Housing has long been PS territory in Brussels, and the SLRB is short of cash, so it’s the pressure point that hurts most. Its liquidity problems date back to the fast build-out of social housing under the Vervoort governments. It owes the region €197 million. To pay some of that down, the new government is already selling two plots in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert and Schaerbeek that were bought for social housing, along with about 200 existing homes. Four housing associations went to court in July to stop those sales.
62,234 households are on the Brussels social housing waiting list. The SLRB and its sixteen local companies manage around 42,000 homes between them.
Without the €131 million the SLRB may struggle to pay its bills this autumn, and more property sales become likely. The strain is already showing inside the system. Several local housing companies have begun refusing to leave their cash in the SLRB’s shared treasury, arguing it gets used to prop up companies in worse shape. That pooled account was around €60 million in the red back in March.
The PS calls the move bluster, a vendetta against one man. The MR says it’s simply putting Laaouej in front of his responsibilities. From opposition, the PTB accuses the liberals of holding tenants hostage.
A Region That Can’t Afford Another Freeze
The timing is bad. While parties argued through 2024 and 2025, Brussels ran on provisional twelfths of old budgets, and by the time the Dilliès coalition took office in February the region carried more than €16 billion in debt. The seven-party coalition has promised a balanced budget by 2029. Plenty of people doubt it gets there. Every structural housing investment sat frozen from June 2024 until this February, and unfreezing it was meant to be an easy early win.
The next date is the budget conclave in early October, where the government settles the 2027 budget. The €131 million has been pushed onto that table. The MR’s price is that the inquiry’s recommendations turn into actual decisions.
Tourists crossing the Grand-Place see a square that looks finished. It took the guilds four years to get there after a bombardment. Brussels now has a plan for 1,000 new public homes and a year’s money for it stuck in a fight over one board seat in Anderlecht.