Referendum on affordable housing to held in Ghent
With 36,000 signatures already having been collected, it is now a certainty that a referendum on affordable housing will be held in the East Flemish city of Ghent. The signatures have already been verified and it is now up to the city authorities to come up with a question that can be put before the good people Ghent. Affordable housing activists collected enough signatures and Ghent City Council is now obliged to hold a referendum on the issue that is clearly important to many in Ghent. The referendum that will be consultative rather than binding will be held in October.
Unlike the rest of us, the people of Ghent will not have to wait until June next year to go to the polls. A referendum will be held there in October. The subject of the referendum will be affordable housing. The action group "Te Duur” (Too Expensive) has succeeded in collecting enough signatures to force a plebiscite.
The Ghent City Council must now make preparations to organise a referendum. "Te Duur” collected 36,000 signatures. At least 27,000 of these were from Ghent residents that are entitled to vote. The city has stopped counting because the required number has been reached.
In Flanders a local authority is obliged to organise a referendum if 10% of those eligable to vote requests one.
What question will be asked?
The city now has time to think about a good and clear question. The action group would like to raise two questions. "Do the people of Ghent want public real estate to be privatised? And, should the city set up a land bank to create social housing?"
However, the chance one (or both) of these questions will be posed is fairly slim. The city can still make adjustments in consultation with the initiators. The exact question that will be on the referendum voting slip will be known before the end of the month. The referendum will then take place in October. As with next year’s local elections, voting will not be mandatory. The referendum will only be considered valid if 10 percent of those eligable to vote have done so.
Previous referendums
The last referendum in Ghent was in 1997 that Ghent organized a referendum. The last attempt at a plebiscite dates from six years ago. Then the Flemish nationalist party N-VA collected signatures in order to hold a referendum on the city’s Traffic Plan.
However, the party failed to collect enough signatures. The 1997 referendum voted against plans for an underground carpark.