The first day of Advent means it is high time to make your wish list public. By December 31, 2021, The inquiry into housing allowances and maintenance support – reduced indebtedness and increased accuracy, BUMS (S 2018:13) to submit its report on the design of the housing allowance. It has been a long wait for the inquiry that was appointed in 2018 and was originally supposed to submit its report on October 1, 2020. Now we have simply waited long enough.
At the beginning of the investigation, SFS conducted a survey among Swedish students, but the results did not provide any direct news. The top three reasons why students do not use housing allowance are fear of repayment obligations, a perception that it feels complicated to apply, and low awareness of the allowance. These answers were also the most common among students with lower incomes. It should be added that need for housing allowance and “it is not needed, I have such a low rent” were also alternatives, and only about 10% of the respondents indicated this.
With skyrocketing rents in both new construction and rent increases that do not keep up with the development of student funds, it is clear that we need a housing allowance that lives up to its purpose instead of punishing those with limited resources. Here is our wish list for the inquiry and the government to reform the housing allowance for Sweden's students:
1. Stop disadvantaging students based on their type of accommodation
With today's system, you must be able to show a rental or housing contract with your name on it to be eligible for housing benefit. In 2019, 6% of students lived in dormitories and were therefore excluded from support to afford their studies. It will take a long time before all students can be offered their own contract at the start of the semester, and it should therefore be obvious that you are entitled to support if you yourself have not been fortunate enough to have your own contract yet.
2. If housing allowance is to be available to students, it should be available to students
As a student, you will receive a total of 10,928 SEK in grants and loans in 2021. During my time at Södertörn University, I never had a rent below 10,000 and as a nineteen-year-old non-Stockholm resident, I did not have many alternatives for accommodation, so thank the gods if you exist and hear me that most of the time I was able to share the rent with a friend. But! Even if my rent had eaten up the entire study fund and I needed to work alongside my studies to replace the ten thousand kronor rent, I would not have been eligible for housing allowance. To receive housing allowance, your total annual income must be a maximum of 86,720 SEK (and your housing costs must be over 1800 SEK, but that feels like the least of the problems in this context).
As a student with a part-time job, it is often not obvious how much the total income will end up being. You may be working gigs or taking shifts when it suits your schedule. Then you will have earned too much and will be liable for repayment. I wish I was joking here but I have never met a student who has taken housing benefit and who has not been liable for repayment.
In addition, we add that housing allowance can only be applied for by students under 29 years of age. If you do not have children. Then you can apply for another allowance. With completely different rules. Flexible.
Solution: Introduce a separate housing allowance for students adapted to the heterogeneity of students.
3. Bad idea: Like making it easier for the students and the authorities in some way?
A really super strange idea would be if we moved the administration of a housing allowance for students from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency to CSN? Or wait. Students who receive student aid are already subject to rules regarding income: anyone with income above the exemption amount has their student aid reduced by the corresponding amount. This already ensures that only people with low incomes receive student aid. It is CSN that checks that the applicant does not reach the exemption amount. CSN also checks that the person applying for student aid meets the requirements for full-time studies or to the extent specified by the student. Does the fact that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency should carry out similar checks of the student's income already mean administrative duplication? By combining payments of housing allowance with payments of student aid, the housing allowance could be based on the income information that CSN already collects.
Could a further advantage of handling students in a separate system be that it is possible to apply more generous rules and at the same time reduce the risk of the system burdening the public sector with incorrect payments? Students are a limited group that is relatively easy to control, and each individual is a student for a limited time. It is also difficult to “earn” on the system since the student loan means that the recipient also becomes indebted. This means that the risk is reduced for the public sector if, for example, students living in a flat or living together can receive a more generous housing allowance within such a system.
Okay, maybe that wasn't such a crazy wish after all. We'll write it down. All good things come in threes.