The ministry, which announced the call for young families, disabled people, single parents, and other residents to submit applications for housing support in the spring, stopped accepting them 10 minutes after the allocated funds were exhausted.
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“Seeing that situation, we took it into account and certain changes were made to ensure smoother submission of applications. The main difference is that applications will be accepted throughout the predetermined period. Their acceptance will not be stopped earlier in any way, I can guarantee that,” Tadas Vinokuras told LRT radio on Friday.
“Everyone will have the right to submit during those days and all applications will be evaluated responsibly,” he added.
The call for support will be announced from Monday 9 a.m. to Friday 12 p.m. Applications are submitted to the administration of the municipality where the housing is planned to be purchased.
“If for technical reasons the application cannot be submitted through the SPIS system, it can also be submitted by email signed with a qualified electronic signature,” said T. Vinokuras.
According to the deputy minister, another important change is that the time of the application submitted by email will be recorded: “If you submit the application by email, the time will be recorded when the email arrives in the municipality’s mailbox (…), the system will not wait for someone to enter it into SPIS, when the application reaches the email, it will be registered and placed in the queue.”
According to T. Vinokuras, applications can also be submitted by visiting the municipal administration or by registered mail.
“We have also introduced a family package in which this measure will play a very significant role, and I would like this measure to really help young families buy housing, because housing affordability is also a demographic issue; families without housing will not have children,” said the deputy minister.
Families without children or raising one child receive a 10% subsidy, two children – 12.5%, three or more children – 15%, and the loan cannot exceed 87 thousand euros.
Only young families who do not have or have not had housing can apply, except in cases where the useful area per person does not exceed 14 square meters or if the housing is more than 60 percent worn out.
A young family is considered to be spouses, as well as registered partners or a single parent raising children up to 36 years old.
The so-called family support package proposed by the government promises to increase support for families’ first housing by about 67 million euros.
