Thousands Risk Losing Access to Social Housing Programmes

The Council of Ministers approved on March 26 a settlement for thousands of applicants of social housing programmes that had had their subscription cancelled since the beginning of this year because they failed to pay their monthly instalments for eight consecutive months. The programmes affected are the Youth and Labour housing programmes.

The settlement included imposing extremely high fines that are disproportionate to the monthly incomes of the applicants and that, in some cases, exceed the market value of the monthly instalments. If the fines are not paid, the subscription to these affordable housing programmes will be permanently cancelled.

This settlement, instead of resolving the issue of cancelling the subscriptions of many applicants, has instead become an additional problem for applicants, especially those wishing to continue their adherence to the youth housing projects.

The Ministry of Public Works and Housing, through its construction companies, including the General Housing Establishment (GHE), implements social housing programmes aimed at providing low or medium-cost housing and sells it to applicants in an affordable manner. The ministry relies on Legislative Decree No. 26 of 2015, which outlines the operations of GHE, along with its executive instructions issued in Decision No. 8 of 2016.

Applications for the youth housing project began in 2002, and by 2005, the number of applicants had reached approximately 62,000. According to recently published data from the GHE, there are currently 55,000 applicants. The completion of youth housing projects was originally planned for between 2012 and 2016, but in reality, most of these projects are still under construction, or construction has not yet begun.

In August 2022, the Ministry of Housing issued Decision No. 6375, which amended the terms for paying monthly instalments in social housing projects. The new terms state that a delay in paying monthly instalments for 240 consecutive days is sufficient to cancel the subscription or the allocation of social housing without the need to warn or notify the applicant.

Subsequently, in its letter No. 11838/6, dated December 3, 2023, the GHE called on youth and labour housing applicants to collect their new electronic cards before the end of 2023. These cards would enable them to pay instalments exclusively via the National Electronic Payment System starting from the beginning of 2024. However, a significant number of applicants were surprised to find no cards issued in their names and that they had been excluded from the payment lists. Many subscriptions were considered cancelled due to irregular payment of monthly instalments for over 240 consecutive days (eight months), retroactively applied to before 2016, even if they had previously settled their payments. According to local media, this affected about 5,000 applicants in youth housing projects across areas controlled by the Damascus government and hundreds in labour housing projects.

In a meeting on March 26, the Council of Ministers, addressing the legal gap that caused the issue, adopted a settlement proposal from the Ministry of Housing. This proposal gives owners of cancelled subscriptions a deadline of July 28 to regularise their status and pay their outstanding instalments with fines.

The Ministry of Housing did not publish the text of the proposal, and the Cabinet did not release the details of the settlement or mention any decision on this matter. Conversely, on April 4, the GHE issued announcement No. 2459/6, inviting those eligible for the settlement, or their legal representatives, to visit the establishment’s branches to review the conditions, bringing with them bank statements related to their payments. However, the GHE later issued another announcement, No. 3130/6, on May 14, removing the requirement for the presence of the applicants or their legal representatives, allowing anyone to settle the status of the cancelled ledger on behalf of its owner.

According to the procedures, settlement involves a single clause: imposing new fines on the owners of the cancelled subscriptions in order to reactivate them, or permanently cancelling the subscription if the fines are not paid. This is based on Article 25 of Decree No. 26 of 2015, which states that subscriptions or allocations can be cancelled due to the applicant’s failure to comply with payment conditions. In such cases, previous payments are refunded after deducting administrative expenses amounting to 10 percent.

Notably, the GHE did not specify the amount of the fines or the calculation method. Instead, it linked the fines to the duration of the delay or irregularity in payments, to be calculated individually for each case. According to testimonies from applicants who spoke to official media after settling, fines range between SYP 2 and 15 million. It should be mentioned that most of the monthly instalments do not exceed SYP 8,000. The GHE stipulated that the fine must be paid in full and cannot be paid in instalments.

Many of those currently seeking settlement had previously settled and received clearance from the GHE. However, the GHE recalculated their previous delays and demanded a new settlement. Some suggest there were electronic errors in calculating the delay periods following the GHE’s digitisation of its files. Some applicants who wished to settle filed objections to the fines imposed on them, revealing in many cases errors due to repeated fine calculations.