Housing Europe: The State of Housing in the EU 2015 – a Housing Europe review

Housing Europe, the European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing, presents a report that reflects the state of the housing sector in the continent.

  • Detailed statistics per member state
  • The latest housing trends in a cross-country observation
  • A compilation of the most significant policy updates since 2012
  • Case studies that feature energy efficiency, social integration, innovation in public policy and governance
  • Analysis of the interaction of housing policies and EU policies

Long Story Short

The overall state of housing in the EU remains unstable: Six years after the low point of 2009 many steps remain to be taken to respond to two very alarming issues that emerge according to the facts and figures of our report:

  1. There are more people without a home today in Europe than six years ago
  2. There are not enough affordable homes available in most European countries to meet the increasing demand

Key Findings

The housing markets are very heterogeneous, making it very difficult to propose a one size fits all approach to housing markets and housing policy from the EU level. The best way, indeed, to observe the markets is at national and even regional level, since the needs of the metropolitan areas, which become increasingly dense, differ a lot from the ones of the rural areas.

There is a sort of “housing trap” in many EU counties, for people who try to enter the housing market:

  • The rental sector is expensive
  • Home ownership is not an option due to the even higher cost
  • Social homes are just not enough with waiting lists growing in a number of countries, including Italy, the UK, France and Ireland.

This leads in many countries to the generational phenomenon that the majority of people aged 18-34 still live with their parents- 66% of them in Italy, 58% in Portugal, 55% in Spain, 74% in Slovakia etc.

A large number of households are overburdened by housing costs and this becomes more and more evident in the crisis-ridden countries like Greece, where more and more families appear to have difficulties to cover their housing expenses as the crisis keeps evolving.

Full article.

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