For more than a century, a row of houses on Route de Mondorf in Bettembourg – originally built for customs officers and their families – has stood empty. A striking sight given today’s acute housing shortage.
The properties, constructed between 1920 and 1923 and now protected as historic buildings, have been unused for many years. Since January 2023, however, they have been owned by the Housing Fund, which now has a redevelopment project on the table.
A walk or drive past the site reveals 11 houses, part of the 71 dwellings built across Luxembourg between 1925 and 1931 for customs staff. Because the buildings are listed, their structural walls must remain intact. Inside, work is already under way: for instance, the original wooden staircases will be preserved and incorporated into the new design.
According to Jacques Vandivinit, director of the Housing Fund, the intention is for the renovated units to eventually offer three to five bedrooms each. He explained that the project is still in its technical phase, with ongoing structural analyses determining exactly how much of the interior needs to be retained.
Behind every house lies a small garden or meadow and a shed, and these outbuildings will be integrated into the redevelopment. Early design sketches, Vandivinit said, were presented to the municipality and the National Institute for Architectural Heritage (INPA) last August, proposing timber-built extensions linking the old sheds to the houses so they become part of the living space.
Bettembourg mayor Laurent Zeimet of the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV) welcomed the prospect of seeing progress at last, noting that it is increasingly difficult to justify why such houses have stood empty for so long. He added that Bettembourg counts between 50 and 70 vacant single-family homes, a situation he considers untenable.
To address this, he recently proposed to the municipal council that Bettembourg introduce a tax on properties left unused for at least five years, in order to encourage owners either to rent them out, renovate them, or sell them.
For the former customs houses, however, the wait appears to be nearing its end. The Housing Fund plans to bring them back to life and place them on the rental market once the redevelopment is completed, currently foreseen for 2030.
