'Blatant cronyism': Saint-Josse social housing authority accused of giving priority to friends and family

A social housing agency in Saint-Joost-ten-Noode has been plagued by fraud for more than two decades, with staff allocating social housing to themselves and their close circle and tampering with accounts, an investigation has found.

The findings come from an audit of the AISSJ agency, Bruzz reports, which declared bankruptcy and closed down at the end of last year.

It found that there were numerous occasions of employees securing social housing for family members and friends, even when the housing was not needed or the applicant was otherwise not eligible.

Loubna Azghoud, leader of the MR group in the Brussels parliament, described the situation as “the most blatant form of cronyism in the housing sector”.

In one instance, an employee granted housing to their hospitalised grandmother just two days before the woman’s death. The grandmother was not physically capable of completing an application and, even after her death, the tenancy agreement was only terminated months later after the employee in question had been fired.

The AISSJ agency was established in 2000 and managed 230 private rental properties in the municipality until its closure. Low-income residents can live in such properties at a lowered rent, while the housing agency pays the private landlords a rent in line with market norms via regional subsidies and also provides them with support for maintenance or renovation.

Social housing agencies were a policy priority of the former state secretary for housing, Nawal Ben Hamou (PS). Across Brussels, 8,109 homes are now let in this way through 22 agencies in total.

The Saint-Josse agency drew the attention of Brussels Housing’s auditors last year because it was struggling with more than half a million euros in debts, partly due to unpaid rent and a major legal case involving a single landlord.

It now appears that the unpaid rents were often for properties rented by the organisation’s own staff, who had granted themselves the properties, and that money was even stolen from vulnerable tenants.

The audit found that the fraud went on for years despite calls for investigations, which were ignored due to "insufficient evidence", and complaints were dismissed.

A 2019 report from La Dernière Heure raised concerns about abuse of power regarding homes that were allegedly allocated at the request of the then housing alderman Philippe Boïketé (PS). Fellow PS party member and current state secretary for housing Karine Lalieux (PS) dismissed those complaints.

Philippe Boïketé’s brother Christian Boïketé, also a PS party member, was chief of staff to Saint-Josse’s mayor Emir Kir, another PS party member until his expulsion in 2020 over dealings with the far-right.

“Another scandal involving social fraud and once again PS is in the spotlight, time and time again,” Flemish MP Karl Vanlouwe (Anders) wrote on X.

It was only after a new, anonymous report made to Brussels Housing in 2024 that a financial audit was granted to identify serious shortcomings and possible legal breaches.

The audit has already been submitted to the Brussels public prosecutor and refers to a “generally failing system of allocation” of social housing at AISSJ and “active involvement of staff members in the creation of fraudulent documents”.

Fraud or forgery is rife both in the allocation of first-time rental properties and in the relocation of existing tenants to another property, the audit found.

The report said that fraud was particularly significant in the case of so-called "first allocations" for new tenants. Of the 181 files examined, covering a period of 18 years, fraud was established in 94 cases and suspected fraud in 44 cases.

A further 24 files were classified as unlawful, for example because the necessary supporting documents were missing to grant a prospective tenant priority. The instances of suspected fraud amount to almost nine out of ten files.

These are partly targeted samples, which means the actual number of breaches may be higher.

The auditors used such samples because the number of registrations with AISSJ did not match the known waiting list.

The local opposition of Ecolo-Groen reacted to the social housing scandal with "outrage".

“What has appeared in the press exceeds what we already feared,” said Ecolo. “This is not a matter of a few bad apples, but of an organised system.”

Ecolo noted that their councillor, Pascal Lemaire, was only appointed to the AISSJ board of directors in July 2025.

“There, he found that not a single document submitted to the board made it possible to identify the true extent of the problems,” the opposition party said.

“Some of these problems were, however, acknowledged in passing by the older members of the board who came from the current municipal administration.

"They were aware of the issues, but didn’t give the new directors the means to gain a clear picture of the situation.

"The municipal council is supposed to exercise oversight. But under their administration, a cancerous growth has eaten away at a social institution that was crucial for hundreds of families.

"This has ruined trust in an entire sector. Politicians bear a heavy responsibility in this."

Brussels MP Sven Gatz spoke on behalf of the regional governing party Anders, adding: “Stop the cronyism where the same people are always helping each other.

"Anders wants clarity on who is responsible and sanctions for those responsible. In the event of a judicial investigation, the Brussels government must bring a civil action."

Opposition parties N-VA and Défi also expressed outrage.

“Fraud in the social housing sector in Brussels is deeply rooted,” said Brussels MP Mathias Vanden Borre (N-VA).

“For 20 years, up to 90% of the allocation files in Saint-Josse were tampered with. The region never intervened until the whole thing went bankrupt.”

Saint-Josse is not the only municipality grappling with a social housing scandal. Hundreds of personal messages and voice messages from the chairman of the social housing association and alderman for housing in Anderlecht, Lotfi Mostefa (PS), point to inappropriate influencing on the allocation of social housing in the municipality.

VRT has reported extensively on the issue. Recently released texts and voice memos show that Mostefa reserved housing for people he liked and denied it to people he did not like, or felt would not vote for him.

“She called me a filthy Arab,” he claimed in October 2023 to his secretary regarding one applicant. “There’s no way we’re going to give her a home.”

Because the application concerned a necessary move, the municipality was forced to ultimately provide housing but allocated her a small flat instead of a house.

In another example, Mostefa’s secretary references a difficult conversation that concerned a denial of housing: “I was curt with her,” she wrote, to which Mostefa replied: “She’s a bit mad, I think. You handled that well. She’s not going to vote for me anyway, lol.”

In Anderlecht, more than 29,600 families are registered on the waiting list for social housing and it takes 13 years on average to secure a home.

Staff said Mostefa had sent them "priority cases" via WhatsApp messages.

Mostefa would only respond to these criticisms via a statement in which he said: "The chairman does not make decisions on allocations or priority cases".