Response to interpellation 2023/24:151 on the situation on the housing market
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD proposes to curb inflation and have a slightly contractionary budget to prevent housing construction from falling 1. KD wants to provide municipalities with stimulus measures to convert premises into housing, increase the supply of land for small houses and investigate presumption rents 2 1. KD proposes an enhanced housing allowance for families with children, investigate rent-to-buy and investigate easing for private individuals to rent out their homes 2 1. KD emphasizes the importance of structural reforms, keeping inflation down and phasing out investment subsidies to prioritize school and care 3 4. V argues that housing is seen as a right and not a commodity 5. V criticizes the government for not providing financial stimulus to housing construction 6. V argues that the government prioritizes tax deductions for the rich over housing allowances and financing of rental apartments 5. SD argues that V and S have created today's situation through migration and the allocation law 7. SD proposes competition-creating measures, common building rules in the Nordic countries and building material trade 7. SD wants to create conditions to enter the housing market through, among other things, start loans for first-time buyers and a review of mortgage caps and amortization requirements 8.
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! Malcolm Momodou Jallow has asked me what measures I intend to take to prevent housing construction from declining further and how I intend to meet the housing shortage for the most economically vulnerable households who de facto cannot buy a small house or other owned housing. Malcolm Momodou Jallow has also asked me what measures I intend to take so that even persons without capital or high income shall be able to get their own home.
Right now, we find ourselves in a tough economic situation where many companies are being pressured hard by inflation. This affects the construction sector in particular, which faces increased prices and decreased demand. The Government therefore proposes and takes measures to strengthen the construction sector. These include, among other things, a temporary raised ceiling for the rot deduction to cushion the effects of the tough economic situation and save jobs in the construction sector so that there is competent staff available when the economy turns, and stimulus measures for the municipalities to provide increased incentives to convert premises into housing and increase the supply of planned land for small houses. An investigator shall also take a position on how the rents for newly produced apartments, so-called presumption rents, can be changed in order to create good conditions for building new rental apartments.
Many households have experienced increased living costs. Housing costs are the single largest expense for many households. To provide households with children and low incomes with extra resources so that they have better conditions to meet their housing costs, the government extends the temporary supplementary grant within the housing allowance for an additional six months until June 30, 2024. The supplementary grant is paid monthly. The level is the same as that applicable during the period July through December this year, which means that the supplementary grant is paid at a level corresponding to 40 percent of the preliminary housing allowance. The housing allowance is a targeted benefit to reach households with weak finances.
One of the investigations that the government has appointed so far is an investigation aimed at facilitating for private individuals to rent out their homes, which can contribute to homes being rented instead of standing unused. In this way, the homes that actually exist can be used in a more efficient manner.
To lower the threshold to owner-occupied housing, the government has also tasked an investigator to propose an expansion of the system with condominiums and a new model for rent-to-own of housing. Rent-to-own implies an opportunity for the tenant to gradually be able to purchase their home. This can facilitate things for those who today find it difficult to enter the owner-occupied housing market, such as young people who are limited by the high capital requirements that are imposed.
We are also preparing the report Lower the threshold to a good home (SOU 2022:14) in the Government Offices. The report presents several proposals that give households the opportunity to acquire a home that meets their needs. The report contains, among other things, proposals on clearer conditions for municipal housing agencies to apply reservations and a larger scope for priority rights.
Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)
Madam Speaker! The answers I have received from the Minister for Housing in connection with my interpellation do not answer a single one of the questions I asked. None of the reforms that the Minister for Housing mentions in his answer address the construction and social crisis that we find ourselves in today. I shall therefore take the opportunity to tell the Minister for Housing what the crisis in Sweden looks like today, so perhaps I can get a better answer during the interpellation debate.
Madam Speaker! The housing crisis is reaching its deepest trough in decades. The housing shortage is greater than ever. Overcrowding is increasing. Young adults continue to be forced into the unserious secondary market, and many of them cannot move out from home. Workers and students are fleeing the cities because they cannot afford to stay. In 180 of 290 municipalities, there is a housing shortage, and in Stockholm, the housing queue is longer than it has been since the 40s.
The construction crisis and the housing shortage are a threat to the entire economy. This applies in particular to Norrland, which could become a world leader within the green industry. The same applies within the Stockholm region, where companies have for a long time had difficulty recruiting due to the housing shortage, and thus the economy in the entire country is threatened.
Madam Speaker! The dead stop we are now seeing in the construction sector does not only result in a further aggravated housing crisis, but hits the entire society. Unemployment risks spreading like ripples in a pond when studies must be interrupted because the students have nowhere to live. The great societal transformation to the green industry becomes impossible when housing is lacking for the incoming workforce. This, Mr. Minister, is the reality we face.
Madam Speaker! While the construction industry crashes before our eyes, our government washes its hands. It puts forward embarrassing proposals and blames all problems on external factors. But the truth is that its own policy drives and exacerbates the crisis. The solution is a long-term social housing policy where the state dares to take its share of the responsibility for the financing of housing construction. That solution must come now, for we cannot wait any longer.
Madam Speaker! Housing construction is at its lowest level in ten years. The decrease since last year is the largest in 30 years. The construction companies speak of the worst crisis since the 90s, and the trade union Byggnads demands a crisis commission to save competence, jobs, and construction.
The government's embarrassing proposal solves no crisis in either the short or long term. The subsidies that have been given to the rich will not fix the housing problem, increase housing construction, or help the vulnerable households. It was the solution to these issues that I requested when I posed my questions to the Minister for Housing. I hope that I can be given the opportunity to receive real answers to the questions I have asked.
Madam Speaker! In the situation we find ourselves in today, we have a housing shortage, increased homelessness, a recession, increasing unemployment, a complete standstill in the construction sector, more and more poor households, skyrocketing debt among households and so on - the list is long. What have Andreas Carlson and his right-conservative government actually done to shorten the list? That is what my question is about.
My question, therefore, is about what measures the government intends to take to prevent housing construction from falling even further dramatically. I hope to receive an answer to these questions.
Roger Hedlund (SD)
Madam Speaker! I would actually like to turn the interpellation back to the interpellator. The Sweden he describes, Madam Speaker, is the Sweden that the interpellator is responsible for. It is the government he has supported that is responsible for how Sweden looks today. Vänsterpartiet has supported the Social Democratic government during all these years and created the conditions for how it looks today.
In 2003, we had a balance in the housing market. Since then, we have not seen that, and the situation has worsened every year that the Social Democrats have governed with the help of the Left Party. Every year, around 43,000 homes have had to be built just to meet the population increase through migration to Sweden. It is a telling figure when it comes to why we have the situation we have in Sweden today.
The old government never reached Boverket's construction goals to even come close to creating a balance in the housing market in Sweden. Instead, we have received the situation that the interpellor describes in their interpellation. We have a labor market that is heavily affected by the fact that our students have nowhere to live. They may choose a different path or not study at all because there are no student housing units or housing at all.
We have seen increased overcrowding, which contributes to many of the negative consequences that we see in many districts in Sweden today. The old Social Democratic government, with the support of Vänsterpartiet, introduced a designation law in 2016 that gave a fast track to housing for the newly arrived who came to Sweden. This meant that the less expensive housing was allocated to the migrants, and this created the situation that we see in Sweden today. Those who want to take a housing unit that is on the housing market are forced to take a newly produced housing unit that is exorbitantly expensive. It is clear that it is difficult to enter the housing market under these conditions.
We see an increased insecurity in our neighborhoods, where gang criminals dominate the entire neighborhood and make it unsafe. It is an area where the government, together with the Sweden Democrats, is today pushing through a series of measures to secure our residential areas again.
But what kind of proposal do we see from, among others, the interpellator and the former government? It is to introduce a climate declaration, which increases the housing cost by 1.5 percent of the production cost. It is a climate declaration that will have no effect at all other than making it more expensive to build housing in Sweden today.
Again: People must have the means to live, and people must have the right to demand what is being built. That is not what is done with that policy. We need long-term changes, such as those the Sverigedemokraterna are proposing today together with the government. We need to take competition-creating measures so that more smaller construction companies can participate in the procurements and in that way press down the prices. We need common construction rules in the Nordic region and a construction material trade that allows us to press down the costs.
It is probably difficult to influence the situation as it looks today with rapid changes. It has sprung from high interest rates and inflation. But with a long series of long-term measures that the government, together with the Sverigedemokraterna, is implementing today, Madam Speaker, we can achieve a better long-term situation on the housing market.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! I note that Malcolm Momodou Jallow claims that he did not receive answers to the questions. I would therefore like to repeat the questions that were asked.
What measures does the government intend to take to prevent housing construction from falling further? In my answer to that question, I mentioned how inflation affects it. Dampening inflation and taking responsibility for having a slightly tightening budget where fiscal policy does not counteract monetary policy is a measure to prevent housing construction from falling further. We also have other proposals that have been voted through in the budget here in the Riksdag. These are stimulus measures for the municipalities to provide increased incentives to convert premises into housing and to increase the supply of planned land for small houses.
Madam Speaker! I also mentioned in my response the investigation that has been commissioned regarding the presumption rents for building new rental apartments and to be able to provide good conditions for that.
The second question was: How does the Minister intend to meet the housing shortage for the most economically vulnerable households? Here I mentioned the increased housing allowance for families with children. That is an answer to the question.
The third question concerns what measures the Government intends to take so that even persons without capital and/or high income shall be able to obtain their own home. I mentioned the proposal on rent-to-own, which is a successful example for instance in Norway, where one can successively purchase their home.
It is one thing if the member does not agree with or does not like the answers, but I gave answers to the interpellant's questions. There are also a number of other questions in this debate that Roger Hedlund has asked.
I really want to clarify, Madam Speaker, that I have answered the questions in the response to the interpellation that I have delivered here in the chamber.
Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)
Madam Speaker! Vänsterpartiet is far from alone in its criticism. Practically the entire industry is crying out for measures, and it is economic incentives that are at the top of the wish list. Most of the outcry comes from the tenants' side because the government seems to have completely forgotten about the rental housing. Rental housing is a large and important form of tenure in which 3 million tenants live in our country. It is not a small, marginal form of tenure that the right can highlight when they look for housing for socially vulnerable households.
Let me quote a number of social actors. Two private housing giants, Heimstaden and Veidekke, called the proposal for an increased tax deduction "a disappointment" when it was presented in connection with the government's budget. Veidekke said that they "hope that the government returns before the budget with some type of targeted measure to stimulate access to capital or that lowers costs so that the construction calculations can add up."
But just yesterday, Veidekke once again had to state that they are extremely concerned about the almost total political paralysis that prevails. Even Hyresgästföreningen points to the government's one-sided focus on owners and says that an expanded rotavdrag will not make the construction calculations add up, will not contribute to the renovation of 200,000 rental apartments, and will not lower the thresholds into the housing market.
The trade union Byggnads also considers the government's proposal to be "beyond criticism" and says: "Substantial investments that actually make a difference here and now were needed." They want the government to "reintroduce and develop the investment support as well as complement the investment support with favorable construction loans in exchange for a lower rent being set".
Today we can all observe that even the Swedish National Audit Office is critical and is giving the government a reprimand. This morning, the Swedish National Audit Office announced that it recommends the government reduce the renovation deduction. The deduction entails a net cost for the state of just over 8 billion kronor, and according to the Swedish National Audit Office, it is quite simply not sufficiently effective.
I cannot express myself much more clearly than the industry and experts do. The proposals that the government has put forward are embarrassing and a fiasco. Everyone in the sector says so.
But for the government and Andreas Carlson, it seems it doesn't matter how deep the crisis becomes. Time passes, and it is becoming increasingly clear that any financial stimulus for housing construction will not come from this government. In the meantime, the acute situation continues to escalate. Young people still have nowhere to live. An ever larger proportion of the population is homeless. Several children are evicted. At the same time, rents continue to increase at a frantic pace, despite the fact that the real estate companies have had decades of prosperous times. Now the tenants are to pay for their interest rate hikes and for all the renovations that were omitted during the good years. People are becoming poorer, and the high indebtedness of Swedish households creates major problems.
What I am looking for is how we solve this crisis. Where is the decisiveness? Where are the solutions to the specific problems we face today? Or are all these social and construction actors wrong when they say they do not see any good and effective solutions, measures, or reforms? The Left Party shares that criticism. Are we all wrong and Andreas Carlson right?
The question is: Will Andreas Carlson and this government listen to the criticism and be self-critical? Will they sit down together with us others and try to find solutions that are effective? Or will Andreas Carlson continue on the same path as now?
Roger Hedlund (SD)
Madam Speaker! I can state that this debate is one big monologue from the interpellator. There seems to be no interest in departing from his script and answering what responsibility he has for the situation that he describes in his own interpellation, which we see Sweden is in and which the government has today had to take responsibility for rectifying. He does not want to take that responsibility and answer the criticism of what is said in the interpellation we are debating in the Swedish Riksdag today.
What we need, Madam Speaker, is to create conditions for people to enter the housing market. I have mentioned several such proposals; the Minister for Housing has done the same. We have had several debates in the chamber where we have raised measures that could have a good effect. First, however, we need to investigate the proposals and create conditions so that they can be implemented in a good way.
One example is the possibility of implementing starter loans for first-time buyers. It is something that the Sverigedemokraterna have talked about for a very long time – an opportunity for people to enter the owned housing market which, in the end, also provides the best economic conditions for owning one's own home in the most economically advantageous stock.
We also need to see what the committee will come to regarding the review of mortgage caps and amortization requirements, which is also a major hurdle for people to enter the housing market.
There are several measures in the pipeline that will be delivered and which will also enable more people to enter the housing market.
With that, Madam Speaker, my speaking time is up. I hope that we might perhaps get an answer.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Madam Speaker! It is falsely claimed that the government and I have forgotten the rental apartment. One of the proposals I highlighted in my response, and which an investigator is working on, concerns precisely the rents for newly produced apartments, so-called presumption rents, and how they can be changed in order to create good conditions for building new rental housing.
I also have good contact with Hyresgästföreningen. When I gathered the industry some time ago and invited a large number of actors, Hyresgästföreningen was of course invited. They did mention, however, that it was not as obvious for the previous government.
So no, I have not forgotten the rental apartment. On the contrary, we need more housing in different forms of tenure that suit different desires and different needs at different stages of life. But we now have high inflation and are in a recession. These are global factors that are not so easy for any government to influence. It is therefore all the more important to keep inflation down, that the measures taken do not risk fueling inflation, and to come up with the structural reforms needed to shorten lead times, make buildable land available, and simplify and improve regulations.
There is no simple solution, a quick fix. The housing shortage cannot be solved with costly subsidies with low precision, as the investment support was designed and as it often becomes.
The Tenants' Association let a consultancy firm conduct a survey which showed that 40 percent of the investment support went to housing that would have been built anyway. This corresponds to 10 billion kronor. In a tough economic situation, 10 billion kronor would go to housing companies that would have built the housing anyway. It is 10 billion that could have gone to schools, to healthcare, to more police officers, or to other important measures. That was why the government, in a very tough economic situation, was forced to prioritize and to phase out this investment support with low precision in a responsible manner.
The final question was whether Andreas Carlson will continue on the same path as now. If one is to interpret that path as a methodical and hard work to tackle the structural problems that we perhaps needed to tackle a long time ago, the answer is yes. If it is to continue pursuing an economic policy that takes responsibility in a tough situation and which does not drive up but rather dampens inflation, the answer is yes. If the question is whether proposals are put forward to dampen the effects for the most vulnerable households and to save some jobs in the sector, the answer is yes.
I welcome dialogue with the various parties in the Riksdag. However, we have a majority behind the government's policy in the Swedish Riksdag. What is important now is to get to the point and come forward with the proposals for structural reforms and measures that, in fact, everyone has seen need to be implemented for quite some time. The need for these is particularly evident in the tough economic situation we are in now, but it is always equally correct to prioritize them. There are no shortcuts, Madam Speaker. We need to take responsibility in a difficult time for Sweden.
Malcolm Momodou Jallow (V)
Madam Speaker! Andreas Carlson speaks of 10 billion kronor that should have gone to the school or the police. At the same time, one can give 12 billion to the richest in deductions and 4 billion to housing allowances. One is happy to give money to the richest, but when it comes to financing the construction of housing or investing money in rental apartments, it is always a problem.
Politics should make a difference and create positive changes in people's lives. But change requires both that the right political decisions are made and that sufficient resources are allocated to implement reforms that move us forward.
It is about a choice of path. There are two paths to choose between.
You who are listening to this can ask yourself the simple question: Which society do you thrive best in? Do you want a society with collective punishment laws for innocent tenants, laws that make it easier to evict both children and women who have been abused by their husbands, market rents for the poorest, pensioners who can no longer manage to pay their rent, and increased homelessness and poverty while billions from taxpayers continue to flow into the homes of the rich?
Or do you want a society with equal laws for everyone, zero tolerance for the eviction of children and greater protection for tenants in general and for abused women in particular, a society that says a firm no to market rents so that pensioners and others do not have to be evicted from their homes just so that the rental companies can earn even more money and a society where low-income earners do not have to pay for the rich's new kitchens?
In such a case, you know which path to take. This is what Vänsterpartiet stands for.
It is important that we see housing as a right. In these days, we see housing as a commodity. It is something that Vänsterpartiet can never stand behind.
Statsrådet Andreas Carlson (KD)
Mr. Speaker! This interpellation debate began with me providing answers to the questions posed by the interpellator. Then it was claimed that these were not answers to the questions. I corrected this and once again provided answers to the questions. Finally, a rather sweeping contribution was made, which I refrain from commenting on.
Housing construction has decreased dramatically. This is primarily as a result of high inflation and a very tough economic situation in our country with a recession. The government takes this very seriously. We are working on the structural reforms that will need to be implemented and are taking responsibility for the Swedish economy in a tough situation. We have also presented proposals to mitigate the effects and will continue to do so.
Let me clarify that with lower inflation, when we have succeeded with the measures highlighted in the budget to dampen inflation, another toolbox opens up for the potentially very tough downturn. I share the picture that has been described of it being a tough situation. Therefore, we stand ready to take measures. It is something the government is always prepared to do.
I thank you for the debate and wish the interpellor and the chairman of the committee a Merry Christmas.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.