The Social Democrats want to allocate between 1-1.5 billion kronor over the next four years to get student housing construction underway.
Seven out of ten students live in a location today where there is a shortage of student housing. There are studies that show that one in four students chooses to opt out of an educational location due to being unable to find affordable housing, says the party's housing policy spokesperson Jennie Nilsson.
She calls it not just a construction crisis but also a crisis for Sweden as a knowledge nation.
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The Social Democrats now want to set a goal of 10,000 new housing units during the period, i.e., 2,500 new student housing units per year.
About 1,000 have been built per year in recent years, and the prognosis for 2024 and 2025 is that it will decrease. So it's a fairly significant increase that we're proposing, says Jennie Nilsson.
The money is intended to go to construction companies in the form of targeted production support. With the support, the Social Democrats also want to ensure that rents will be at a level that students can afford to pay.
The proposal is part of the party's shadow budget, but it's a smaller amount of the up to 1.5 billion kronor that will end up in the shadow budget for 2025, since the support is designed so that the money is paid out only when the projects are completed.