Response to interpellation 2022/23:385 on a new set of building tools for Municipal Sweden
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD argues that the investment support was not effective since 40 percent of the housing would have been built anyway 1 2. KD believes that the government is working on accurate reforms and that the housing shortage cannot be solved with costly subsidies 2. KD claims that the phasing out of the investment support took place in a responsible manner following a parliamentary decision 3 and that the government is working at a high pace with reforms to improve the housing market 3 4. S argues that the support contributed to 30,000 more homes 5. S believes that the government suffers from paralysis, lacks clear goals 6 and that their policy does not build any housing 7.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! Arwin Sohrabi has asked me if I intend to introduce a new state investment support, if I intend to exempt public services from the Public Procurement Act, and if I intend to introduce a modern variant of the right of first refusal as stated in the interpellation.
To begin with the investment support, I do not share Arwin Sohrabi's view that just because a housing project has been financed with state funds, the housing has been provided solely thanks to this support. According to a report that the consulting firm Tyréns has made on behalf of Hyresgästföreningen, up to 40 percent of the support has gone to housing that would have been built anyway. With that result as a starting point, one can hardly call the support effective. The Government and I do not intend to introduce such an investment support as Arwin Sohrabi calls for.
When it comes to the Public Procurement Act and its consequences for public housing companies, it is stated in the report Building and Housing at a Lower Cost (SOU 2020:75) that the issue is complex. The issue is also addressed in the report Lower the Threshold to a Good Housing (SOU 2022:14), which also contains a proposal for an amendment to the Public Procurement Act. The report is being prepared within the Government Offices, and I do not wish to anticipate the result of this preparation.
The third question concerns the introduction of a new pre-emption law. On May 17, 2023, the Government decided on additional directives for the ongoing investigation into a new pre-emption law. The Government has shifted the focus of the investigation and has now tasked the investigator with reviewing the specific situations where it may be justified for the municipality or the state to intervene and take over a real estate purchase. It concerns preventing and combating organized crime and protecting the total defense. The Government therefore does not intend to introduce such a variant of pre-emption rights as Arwin Sohrabi proposes.
Arwin Sohrabi (S)
Madam Speaker! While we stand here and debate, we are facing perhaps the worst housing crisis in several decades. When I speak to people about how the Sverigedemokratiska right-wing government has a housing minister who actively chooses not to act but instead sabotages, I am very often met with surprise. People are surprised that we actually have a housing minister given the lack of action and housing policy.
Today I can personally at least confirm the existence of the government, but whether the government has a housing policy is for him to account for during the course of the interpellation debate.
We can start with the investment support that the government removed. One can, of course, think what one wants about the support, but if we pause the thinking for a moment and look at the facts, it cannot be denied that the support contributed to increased housing construction. The Minister knows this. He knows it because the same report that he referred to in his answer says that the support in total contributed to 30,000 more housing units with lower rent that otherwise would not have been completed.
The report also shows that all housing built with the support, not just the 30,000, had lower rent than other new production. In my home municipality Malmö alone, approximately 2,200 apartments had been built where investment support was granted up until September 2021.
If the support had been removed when we still had Social Democratic record figures for housing construction, it would probably also have affected the construction rate, but that the government removed it during a burning crisis and in what may be the worst housing crisis in several decades must be said to be particularly inept.
If it continues like this, unfortunately, the legacy of the government and the cabinet will only be a void, for where housing should have stood, we find today nothing other than just a void. This void is, however, very representative of the government's paralysis of action, lack of energy, and total resignation in the face of the crisis.
After that, we have the right of first refusal, Madam Speaker. The previous Social Democratic government commissioned an inquiry into a modern variant of the right of first refusal for the municipalities, which, among other things, was intended to promote long-term social transformation and counteract segregation. This, of course, the Minister and his colleagues could not allow, and therefore they scrapped that direction entirely. I can only regret that the Minister did not even want to see the results of the commissioned inquiry.
Madam Speaker and listeners! In conclusion, I would like to briefly touch upon the proposal to exempt public utilities from LOU, which now appears to be under preparation. I just want to add that the listeners should know that investigations have shown that today's LOU rules disadvantage the public housing companies and actually lead to higher costs.
One may ask why public service should not be allowed to operate on commercial terms. I want to remind the Minister that even when the Alliance government introduced the so-called allbolag in 2011, it was stated that it was about public service being allowed to operate on just commercial terms.
Housing is not like any other commodity, but is a central part of our welfare. We have now heard what the Minister and the government do not want, but the opposition does not build any housing. How much longer shall the municipalities stand without support and tools to tackle the crisis?
Markus Kallifatides (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer! I thank the interpellator Arwin Sohrabi for the opportunity to participate here in issues that the Minister and I have had the pleasure of discussing a number of times during the parliamentary year.
Madam Speaker! It is clear that with an SD-controlled right-wing majority in Sweden's Riksdag, we get a right-wing policy in Sweden - a policy that, in my opinion, is a bad right-wing policy. We get marketization, privatization, and underfunding of welfare and labor market policy. We get tax cuts and electricity subsidies targeted at millionaires and perhaps even billionaires.
We are seeing a curtailment and limitation of the scope of action and possibilities for action for democratically elected politicians. For example, a potentially upcoming modern right of first refusal on the residential area is being narrowed. Municipal politicians shall not be allowed to use urban planning and land use as a tool to combat housing segregation, secure industrial development, and ensure a just climate transition.
Madam Speaker! None of this is what Sweden needs. But I wonder if the premature phasing out of the investment support for the construction of rental apartments with lower rent levels is not a kind of attempt to set a Swedish record in poorly timed politics.
We see now that in 2023, approximately 60,000 homes will be completed in Sweden. In 2024, according to Boverket's forecast, 40,000 homes will be completed. In 2025, according to the same forecast, 30,000 homes will be completed, which means half of what is needed per year. Where will we end up in 2026, Andreas Carlson?
Madam Speaker! In his response to Member Sohrabis's interpellation, the Minister argues that the investment support that existed was not effective, and he refers to the Tyrén report which was commissioned by the Tenants' Association. In this report, it is stated that approximately 60 percent of the apartments that were built with support would not have been built without support.
In the years 2017-2021, we invested 9.7 billion kronor. According to the report, we received 30,000 apartments. 62,000 people live in these apartments, statistically estimated. At a cost of 156,000 kronor per person, these people received a newly built, good and well-planned home to live in.
The Minister argues that this is not effective, or has not been. Then I wonder: Compared to what? Is it perhaps compared to the million that we have invested so that non-European labor migrants shall get employment in the construction industry in Sweden, or what is it being compared to?
My question to the Minister before the summer break is: Can the Riksdag hope for somewhat more accurate assessments of the effectiveness of measures in the housing policy area going forward?
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! I want to begin with Arwin Sohrabis's follow-up questions. An interpellation debate proceeds in such a way that a minister receives concrete questions, and I have provided answers to these questions in the interpellation response. It may not always be exactly as the member wishes. But to take the answers to these three questions as an argument that we are not doing other things in the housing area does not really hold up. We are doing very much right now, and we have a very tough situation on the housing market.
Regarding the issue of the investment support, which both members raise, the housing shortage cannot be solved with costly subsidies with low precision. According to the evaluation that I referred to, and which the members also took up in their remarks, 40 percent of the housing - four out of ten houses - would have been built even without the support.
What is this about in kronor? Well, it is about that approximately 10 billion kronor of the taxpayers' money went to constructions that would have happened anyway. It cannot in any way be considered an efficient and responsible management of the taxpayers' money in a situation where the economy is very tough, not least for the most vulnerable households. And that is where the government has placed its greatest focus in its spring revision budget, where the reinforcement and extension of the temporary housing allowance for families with children is the single largest investment, or item, in the budget.
It was the Riksdag that decided to phase out the investment support in 2021. If the government had not followed through on this decision, we would have had applications amounting to 16 billion kronor for coming years to handle. Together with the 4 billion kronor that have been provided by the government to phase out the investment support in a responsible manner, the sum would have amounted to 20 billion Swedish kronor. An example to understand how large this sum is is that the entire reform space for the current budget this year is 40 billion kronor.
Not even the Social Democrats themselves thought it was a justified economic priority in this economic situation, as they did not put a penny more than the government in their shadow budget to maintain the investment support.
The government is therefore working on accurate reforms. There is a neglected need for reform. Buildable land needs to be made available, lead times need to be shortened, and regulatory frameworks need to be improved and changed.
Two weeks ago, I invited a large number of actors in the housing and construction sector to talk about precisely the tough situation that is occurring right now. Several proposals were put on the table. There was primarily a consensus regarding the structural obstacles that need to be addressed. We would have been in a better position if the previous government, during the eight years when there was primarily a boom and it was cheap to build, had used this time to prepare housing construction in Sweden for a tougher situation like the one we are now in. That chance was not taken, and we now have to bear the responsibility for that as we work at a high tempo to develop the reforms required to achieve a better functioning housing market, so that more people can realize their housing dreams.
The government will, of course, return to this, and I look forward to that. We will return with reforms already this autumn and during the mandate period. We will certainly have reason to return to this also in interpellation debates.
Arwin Sohrabi (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the answer.
It may be that the Minister has not yet understood the seriousness of this situation, and it may be that the Minister believes that our warnings about the collapse are based on our opinions. I would therefore like to urge the Minister to listen to the authorities, provided that the Government now has any confidence left in them.
Boverket states that more than 60,000 housing units need to be built every year just to meet the housing supply. The Minister of Housing knows this, of course. In their June forecast, however, it is stated that the number of housing units started decreases from over 70,000 during the peak year 2021 to approximately 27,000 this year and to 22,000 next year. They are not alone in having such a gloomy forecast.
According to SCB, for example, housing construction is plummeting by 50 percent across the entire country - a halving. And in some regions, for example my own, the fall is even steeper. Despite this - eight months after the Minister took office - nothing has yet been presented to get construction started.
It is clear that the Minister in this interpellation can dodge and talk about what you want to do. But the fact remains that nothing has been done.
The support that the Minister so easily dismisses could today have made cheaper housing possible for ordinary people. When the rug was pulled out from under the investment support, it turned out that, with surgical precision, obstacles were placed in the way of housing construction instead of maintaining it. The support could have functioned as a buffer during this downturn.
We Social Democrats also had a proposal to at least pay off the debt for 2023 instead of completely pulling the rug out from under this support.
As has been stated previously, one may think what one likes about the accuracy of the support. But 30,000 homes would not have been built if it were not for this support. And these homes would have been more than helpful in these times of crisis.
I just want to briefly tell the Minister, with an example, what consequences his actions actually have in reality. The other day, one could read in the newspapers in Malmö that a developer said they will have to raise the rent significantly in a property they are about to build which contains almost only small one-room apartments. They will need to raise the rent by almost 20 percent because specifically the investment support was abolished and because they had planned based on the investment support when they planned this building.
What does the Minister say to all these people – many of whom may be young people who would receive this as their first home – who will now face shock-increased rents because this support is being withdrawn and they aren't even letting the queue be thinned out? Does he think at all about how his actions affect ordinary people?
Madam Speaker! As the reason for stopping the investigation into pre-emption rights, the Minister stated in an interview that it has caused concern among certain households and property owners. I thought this statement was somewhat comical. What has caused much concern among many households is, in fact, the fact that people do not know where they are going to live in the future. But the Minister has not acted on this at all.
Even though the Minister may think it, no one expects him to do in eight months what the previous government did in eight years, but I think everyone expects him to at least do something. In what other job can one go for eight months without doing anything?
Of course, no one is accusing the Minister of having initiated an economic crisis; what he is accused of is most likely having worsened the crisis by dismantling important supports. Furthermore, it is not just about construction but also about jobs that are lost when the housing industry is affected.
Markus Kallifatides (S)
Madam Speaker! Minister Andreas Carlson speaks of 10, perhaps 20, billion kronor that could have been invested in investment support forward if the old regulatory framework had applied. He is, therefore, frightening us with these large figures.
That is why I think it is appropriate, Madam Speaker, to point out that 13 billion was what the sitting government invested in lowering the tax for us Members of Parliament and other high-income earners. Elisabeth Svantesson has also sent out memoranda regarding preparing tax cuts on the order of 24 billion, not least for high-income earners, during the coming years. Apparently, there is therefore money for tax cuts for Andreas Carlson and me, but not to build housing, combat overcrowding, and secure a society that holds together and a construction industry that survives.
Earlier during the early summer, I noted that the Minister of the Government does not have any own forecasts regarding housing construction during the mandate period. I have also noted that there are no clear housing policy goals - not even those that the Minister for Housing's party colleague Larry Söder emphatically demanded in this chamber during the previous mandate period. I further mean that the Minister for Housing lacks a credible plan for how we are to get housing construction started.
Despite all this, Madam Speaker, I would like to wish Andreas Carlson a very nice summer and thank him for this debate. At the same time, I want to point out that the summer is a good opportunity to reflect and perhaps rethink. Support will need to be given to the new construction of housing that ordinary people can afford to live in. Sweden needs a different housing policy.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! I have understood the gravity of the situation. It is a very tough situation on the housing market.
The forecasts that both SCB and Boverket have presented, as well as the reports from various actors in the industry that I often encounter—it could be civil society, the parties in the tripartite agreement, construction companies, or actors from other parts of the housing market—underscore the seriousness. That was also why I invited to a large and important meeting two weeks ago. There, several proposals were put on the table that we are now analyzing.
Arwin Sohrabi says that we abolished the investment support lightly. We did not do that at all. It was a parliamentary decision. The Riksdag's decisions are not light-hearted decisions. The government must, of course, follow what the Riksdag decides, and we phased out the investment support in a responsible manner.
The question, however, goes back to Arwin Sohrabi: Where are the 10 billion kronor to be sourced from? Should they be taken from schools, healthcare, and elderly care? One can do as Kallifatides does, that is, debate taxes, but then one might as well ask why Members of Parliament should receive an increased child allowance. It is precisely what the Social Democrats are proposing, in contrast to what the government has done. We have increased the temporary supplementary allowance for families with children, which reaches 110,000 families with children who truly need extra support. It could make the difference for them during the tough summer that many families are now facing.
It is one of the things that the government has done. I intended to list a few more, because I do not believe that Arwin Sohrabi has kept up with everything the government has done during these eight months to achieve a better functioning housing market.
Boverket has been tasked with preparing proposals for significant relaxations of the building requirements for student housing.
We have appointed an inquiry into lowering the threshold for individual ownership in order to develop the system of condominiums and a new model for rent-to-own housing that works well in many other countries, not least Norway.
We have appointed a committee for higher productivity growth. One of the problems in the housing market is that the growth is very low when it comes to construction.
We have appointed a committee that has been tasked with analyzing how borrower-based macroprudential measures function and developing appropriate changes regarding both the design of the mortgage ceiling and the amortization requirement.
The Financial Supervisory Authority has mapped out the exceptions from the amortization requirements during the winter of 2022-2023 and the valve for amortization that is important for many of the households where the life situation changes. One might lose their job or, due to illness, not be able to amortize at the same pace.
The County Administrative Boards have been tasked with reporting on which measures are being implemented in cooperation with the municipalities to promote increased housing construction where there is a shortage of housing. This puts increased pressure on both the County Administrative Boards and the municipalities.
We have referred a memorandum with a proposal for an increased flat-rate deduction when renting out private residential properties, private homes, and rental apartments so that it will become more profitable to rent out a part of one's home. We have also commissioned an inquiry to simplify private rentals as well as an inquiry to produce proposals to essentially restore the presumption rent system. In that case, the consequence has been that a part of the calculation has been heavily affected, which both the public sector and many others have pointed out.
We have also made it an additional directive in the pre-emptive rights act that has been debated previously, and we also have many other things in the works.
The problem is not that we have done too little during these eight months, but that there was a great need for reform after the Social Democrats' eight years. We are now working to catch up at a high pace, and I look forward to returning with more reforms, Madam Speaker.
Arwin Sohrabi (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister and also Markus Kallifatides.
I would first like to say that we Social Democrats are, of course, in favor of some of the proposals, for example the one regarding increased housing allowance. I also want to say that I stand by what I said earlier, namely that the right-wing parties lightly abolished the important investment support.
I previously noted that it is up to the Minister to present whether or not he has a housing policy. In his latest post, the Minister raised some proposals that he has put forward. It remains to be seen whether they will lead to increased construction, but in any case, it is not visible in the forecasts.
Unless the Minister of Housing's concluding remarks go completely against the passivity we have unfortunately grown accustomed to, we can unfortunately state that the government's housing policy does not build any housing. A number of reforms were blathered out, but they do not build any housing. To have a housing minister who does not build housing – a housing minister without an action-oriented housing policy – is certainly possible, but it is meaningless.
Regardless of this, I hope that the Minister will continue to take the issue with the seriousness it deserves, which he claims he does. Hopefully, this interpellation debate has contributed something. Perhaps June 27 will become a wake-up call.
I would like to conclude by expressing a hope that the Minister, in his final statement, will not provide a flippant answer where he rejects all responsibility, refers to the fact that he has only had the job for eight months, or – which is even worse – places the responsibility on someone else entirely. I would also like to take this opportunity to wish a pleasant summer to the Speaker, the audience, and Markus as well as, above all, to the Minister. I wish that he has a pleasant summer.
I also want to say that we Social Democrats are ready to act. What Sweden needs is, in fact, a government that acts, and what Sweden has now is a government that negates.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! Sweden is in a tough economic situation. The construction rate is falling, and the conditions for housing construction have deteriorated significantly. It sounds a bit in the debate as if Arwin Sohrabi does not quite see the development, which is largely due to global factors. It is about high inflation, rising interest rates, increased energy prices, a decreased demand, and a great deal of uncertainty. At the same time, the construction need remains large in our country, and the structural problems in the housing market are not due to global factors but rather because housing policy has been deprioritized for far too long.
We have now restructured part of the housing policy and increased the pace. It would have been welcome if more reforms had been in place to shorten lead times, secure more buildable land, and simplify and improve regulations. It is nonetheless not wrong to do it now at a high pace. It was also something that many in the industry called for in the round-table discussions two weeks ago. Now that the economy is turning and we see increases in both productivity costs and financing problems, it is clear that we would have been in a better position if several of these things had been in place. But the government is now working at a high pace to achieve a better-functioning housing market. We are also analyzing proposals that have come forward and which can mitigate the effects in the short term. In that case, the most important message to the households that have the very smallest margins is that it has been our main priority to mitigate the effects for them. We will return, and I look forward to it.
I would like to thank you for this interpellation. I would also like to wish a pleasant summer to the members, to Madam Speaker, to all the hard-working colleagues in the Riksdag Administration who are represented here in the chamber this morning, and to all the listeners who have followed the debate.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.