Socialists criticise CSOK for raising housing prices

Budapest (MTI) – The opposition Socialists have criticised the government’s housing subsidy programme, known as the CSOK, for “only deepening the housing crisis in Hungary”.

Home prices, vacant plots and the price of rentals has shot up as a direct consequence of the government’s CSOK programme, Ildikó Bangó Borbély, the party’s lawmaker, told a press conference on Saturday. The regulations of the CSOK exclude tens of thousands of families from the subsidies, mainly the ones that would need it the most, she said. Average-income families who do not own a home or young people wanting to start a family have no access to these subsidies, she insisted.

She added that the government should start a subsidy programme for rented flats and build houses for rent. This could help mobilise the workforce, reducing unemployment, she said.

The ruling Fidesz party said in a statement that the “Left has opposed the housing subsidy programme from the start and if it was up to them they would eliminate support, as they did when they were in government”. The Socialists doubled VAT on housing and “pushed a lot of families into foreign-currency debt,” the statement said.

Source: MTI