Housing tenure, housing costs and poverty in Flanders (Belgium)

This article deals with the relation betweenhousing and poverty in Flanders (Belgium). Wedescribe how home tenure and housing costsdeveloped differently for different incomegroups. Furthermore, we assess the impact ofthese evolutions on poverty and welfaredistribution. Our analyses show that in theobserved period homeownership increasedstrongly among higher-income categories andremained stable or even decreased amonglow-income households. Average housing costsincreased more for low-income households thanfor high-income households, leading to a sharpincrease in problematic rent-to-income ratiosfor the former. It appears that especially theprivate rented sector is problematic. Thesocial rented sector is evaluated ratherpositively. Taking account of housing costsleads to higher poverty levels and higherwelfare inequality compared to the situationwhere only current income is used to calculatepoverty and welfare distribution.