Clientelism is not an accident, it is an organised system. 3 concrete cases now show how social aid and housing become tools for electoral loyalty-building for the PS, while public structures are managed as party annexes. Result: tens of millions of euros lost in Mons, suspicious allocations in Anderlecht alongside their questionable management of the CPAS, and a long-running fiasco at La Sambrienne. Everywhere, the same mechanics of mismanagement, opacity and irresponsibility. And in the end, the real victims are precisely those who are supposedly being helped: families left on waiting lists or in substandard housing.
At this point, mismanagement is not an exception for the PS, it is the rule.
1. Instrumentalisation of aid, electoral clientelism
- In their hands, social aid has become a tool for electoral conquest: in municipalities with a high concentration of beneficiaries, the granting of aid or social housing becomes a lever for loyalty-building.
- In municipalities and institutions that have long been run by the left, social welfare structures, CPAS, housing companies, are too often managed as party appendages rather than as rigorous public services, with the direct result being massive waste of public money and a betrayal of legitimate beneficiaries.
- “Cronyism” costs hundreds of millions: combined, the lost revenue (€60 million at La Sambrienne), the unrecoverable debts (€26 million at the Mons CPAS), the empty and unfit housing, the audits and crisis managers paid for by taxpayers, all of this is the real bill of clientelism.
- The real victims are legitimate beneficiaries: families who have waited years for social housing while allocations are made through illegal committees; beneficiaries living in unsafe and unfit housing… Clientelism betrays above all those it claims to defend.
2. The case of the Mons CPAS
- This morning's figure speaks for itself: €26 million in uncollected debts as of 31 December 2025, or 20% of the total budget of the Mons CPAS (€130 million), left on the table by a structure that publicly complains about financial difficulties since the unemployment reform.
- €853,805.27 in unclaimed INAMI medical flat-rate payments, linked to former retirement homes managed by the CPAS, a debt forgotten for years, visible in the accounts, never chased up.
- €13 million in claims against social debtors: RIS payments made in error (fraud, mistakes, unreported changes in circumstances), but also recoverable aid decided by the CPAS itself for rent, energy costs, and various interventions.
- The height of irony: Mons also missed out on €13 million in federal aid for failing to meet the required population threshold, a problem of administrative diligence in a city already champion of municipal debt (more than €3,200 of debt per inhabitant).
3. Le Foyer Anderlechtois: the model of clientelism in Anderlecht
- This month, May 2026, an investigating judge was appointed over leaks and suspicions of corruption in the allocation of social housing at Le Foyer Anderlechtois, a judicial inquiry opened after months of anonymous letters.
- An internal exemption committee was ruled illegal by the SLRB (regulator): it granted up to 25% of allocations outside any statutory control, compared to 6% for other social housing bodies, with accusations of payments to obtain housing.
- The audit of Le Foyer highlights: fragile governance, expenses approved without a board vote, public contracts split up to bypass control thresholds, all under the chairmanship of a PS alderman of Anderlecht who also chairs the local CPAS.
- This same Anderlecht CPAS was called out by the Pano (VRT) programme for integration income granted to people who had no entitlement to it, exactly the category of debt exploding in Mons.
4. La Sambrienne: Wallonia's largest social housing body, the PS's biggest fiasco
- A damning official audit: of the 27 points checked by the Walloon regulator, 14 present a “high” risk: unproven gas and electrical compliance, electrical non-compliances dating from 2019 never corrected, fire safety with no evidence of follow-up.
- 200 empty homes while more than 4,000 families wait: while thousands of households are on this list, nearly 13% of La Sambrienne's housing stock stands empty (vacant homes also too often listed as “under renovation”), a clear sign of inefficient management.
- Nearly €60 million in lost subsidies: La Sambrienne missed out on significant renovation grants due to lack of preparation and follow-up, meaning more than 1,200 unrenovated homes that could have been restored.
- The Walloon Government was forced to step in: a crisis manager was appointed on 17 April 2026 to urgently turn around La Sambrienne, with an immediate mandate on tenant safety and financial recovery.
- The PS has always run La Sambrienne: the current chairman is PS, the former chairman was PS, the city is the majority shareholder (56%), and it too is governed by the PS. One would think that for them, mismanagement is not an exception, it is the rule.
- The board of directors voted far too late for the dismissal of the technical and property directors, after more than 15 years of uncorrected dysfunction.