Data protection for people applying for housing allowance

The Housing Bank collects, stores and uses information about you to calculate the correct amount of housing allowance and to verify your application. We only process the personal data necessary to handle your application. 

Information about you is also incorporated into the statistics produced by the Housing Bank, but this information cannot be linked to individuals. 

Section 8 of the Housing Allowance Act gives the Housing Bank a legal basis for processing the personal data of you and other people in your household when you apply for housing allowance. Anyone over the age of 18 will be notified in a separate letter that we are collecting data about them. 

Responsibility for processing your personal data is shared between the Housing Bank and the municipality (or Oslo borough) where you live. The municipality registers your application or approves it if you have applied online.

The Housing Bank uses your personal data to make the correct decision on your housing allowance application. If you have received housing allowance that you were not entitled to, the Norwegian Tax Administration's debt collection authority will also process your personal data when recovering the overpaid amount on behalf of the Housing Bank.

The Housing Bank has data processing agreements with external service providers that carry out work on our behalf, such as preparing and sending letters. These service providers may only use your personal data for the purposes agreed with the Housing Bank and are subject to confidentiality obligations.

In order to process your application, each month the Housing Bank collects information from:

• The National Population Register – information about the national identity number, name, marital status and registered address of all of the people in the application. If you apply electronically, we collect information about close family members who live at the same address as you. 
• The Norwegian Tax Administration – information about taxable monthly income such as wages/salary, benefits, etc. We also collect information about net wealth, the tax value of your main home, income from capital, income from self-employment and foreign income from your latest tax assessment. 
• Nav – information about whether you are classified as a young person with a disability 
• The Property Register – information about your home
• Your municipality – the rent you pay if you live in municipal housing and average municipal taxes
• The Norwegian Digitalisation Agency’s common contact register – mobile phone number and/or e-mail address

To check that our decision on your housing allowance application has been based on accurate information, we may collect further information in conjunction with processing your application, or after we have processed it. We may, for example, collect information from the Norwegian State Education Loan Fund, private lenders, your landlord, the housing cooperative, the holding company of a jointly owned property and postal companies; cf. Section 8 of the Housing Allowance Act. 

In some cases the Housing Bank will share information about you. 

• If you receive social benefits, municipal housing allowance or any other municipal financial support with your housing expenses, we may share information about how much housing allowance you have received with your municipality. 
• Information about how much housing allowance you have received is shared with the Norwegian Tax Administration each month, even though housing allowance is a non-taxable benefit. 
• If you are asked to repay any excess housing allowance you have received, your details will also be passed on to the Norwegian National Collection Agency. 
• The Housing Bank may also share information with other bodies that have a legal right to receive that information. That could include Nav, local tax authorities and municipal authorities. 
• In conjunction with research projects, information from the housing allowance register may be provided and linked to information in other public records.
• Anonymised information is provided to Statistics Norway.

The Housing Bank must comply with the Norwegian Archives Act. Consequently, necessary information from your application and other documents relating to your case will be stored even after it has finished being processed. 

When you have started filling in an electronic application for housing allowance, but have not yet submitted it, the Housing Bank will store the information for 30 days so that you can return to continue your application. You may at any time log in and delete an application that you have started. 

If you submit a paper application it will be stored in the municipal archives as well as being stored in the housing allowance computer systems. 

Everyone who processes housing allowance applications at your local municipality and at the Housing Bank has a duty of confidentiality and will have signed a declaration of confidentiality. Municipal employees and people who work at the Housing Bank are only given access to information about you if there is a legal need for it. Access to the housing allowance computer systems is protected with access controls. When employees work on your case in the housing allowance computer systems, their activity is logged and can be traced later. 

You have right to complain to the Norwegian Data Protection Authority if you are unhappy with how we are processing your personal data, or if you believe that our processing is in breach of data protection regulations. You can find more information about how to complain on the Data Protection Authority’s website.