“We would like to reinvent the ANL”. The Romanian state proposes to create a housing stock of necessity or for young people, says an official from the Ministry of Development

The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) pilot projects in the field of housing and beyond, which are to be implemented, could be announced at the beginning of next year, said Orsolya Maria Kover, secretary of state in the Ministry of Development, Public Works and Administration, during a press conference, reports Agerpres.

“We start with the part of 'affordable housing' or social housing which is not necessarily social in the sense that we use social housing in Romania, but at an affordable price. We propose a new mechanism. We would like to reinvent the ANL (National Housing Agency, no). Why? We find that, first of all, there is a pressing need to make energy efficient and consolidate the residential buildings we currently own. And then we would like to we have a complementary mechanism: let's focus on building housing and creating communities for older people. I'll give you an example: out of approximately 9 million homes that exist in Romania, 2.4 million are inhabited by single people, and 1.2 million are lived in by people who are alone and elderly. We would like to create a mechanism by which we offer them a high quality of life in some communities. following that the apartments we buy from these people will be consolidated, rehabilitated and transformed into a housing stock”, said Orsolya Maria Kover, at a conference on the real estate market in Romania.

“In Western Europe it exists. Let's set up a mechanism that works here too”

She emphasized that the mechanism is still in the phase of being thought out in detail, which is why she cannot provide much information in this regard.

“We aim to ensure these movements from multiple funds, part of our national funding programs that we have, part of the cohesion funds that we discussed at length with Minister Pîslaru (Minister of European Investments and Projects, no), because we want to have a much more coherent and much more global thinking regarding the next funding – and part of it from other funding plans, such as and the National Social and Climate Plan, where there are some segments that can be taken over and financed”, stated the state secretary.

According to her, the Romanian state does not have a stock of necessary housing, not even for young people.

“We would like to create several options. First of all, the Romanian state does not have a stock of necessary housing. We should also focus a little on this aspect in the future. God forbid, we must have necessary housing. Apart from these, we do not have a stock of housing that we have for young people, regardless of whether it is for rent or for sale, but we must have something like that. At the same time, we would like to inform them that what we have discussed at length with the Ministry of Finance is the creation of public-private partnership programs, including on the housing side, because practically these mechanisms exist on the housing side that work very well. Given that the big banks that finance our programs, the EIB, the World Bank, already have these programs set up by PPPs, including for collective housing that can be of several types, not necessarily social ones, we would like to approach a little more intensively on this topic and to set up a mechanism that will work for us as well. The Ministry of Finance is really an active partner. I hope that at the beginning of next year we will be able to announce the pilot projects that we are starting to implement together, as well as the other investment segments,” added Orsolya Maria Kover.