Brussels: Europe and the Arabs
Housing Minister Mathias Diependel said, “The rules for concluding a rental contract will be tightened, so that no one living illegally in the country will be able to rent a house,” according to what was reported by media in Brussels on Friday morning, according to the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws. The Minister in the Flemish government added that this requires We cooperated at the federal level.
According to the same sources, in recent days, there has been more interest again in people residing illegally, because the perpetrator of the terrorist attack a few days ago in Brussels did not have residency papers. The Minister now wants to take steps to ensure people in this situation are unable to rent a home.
Anyone currently residing illegally in Belgium can conclude a rental contract on the private housing market. The renter only needs to provide name, place of birth, and date, so this information can be transferred to the federal government's registration platform, "MyRent."
But the Minister wants to add the national registry number for foreigners who are legally present in the country. There will soon be a need for valid residence papers, and this is something that a person residing illegally does not have. The minister says he will introduce this change in a new decree that he will submit to the Flemish government.
However, the database with registrations is a federal responsibility. “We've been calling for regionalization for some time,” says Diependel. "The database is not currently working properly." Diependel has already sent a letter to Federal Anti-Fraud Minister Vincent van Petegem, but it has remained unanswered so far, he told Radio 1.
Banning undocumented people as renters is also seen as a way to ease pressure on the housing market.
A few days ago, a Tunisian person who did not have legal residency papers in Belgium carried out an attack by randomly shooting a group of Swedish fans on the day of a football match between Belgium and Sweden. The attack resulted in the death of two people and the perpetrator fled until the morning of the second day, when the police were able to determine his whereabouts. In a café in the Schaerbeek neighborhood in Brussels, he was shot and taken to a hospital, but he breathed his last there.