Innovative Public Policies to Address the Housing Crisis in Europe (CIDOB, Sept 2017)

• Affordable Housing in Europe: Innovative Public Policies that can Effectively Address the Housing Crisis

• By Maria Sisternas. Published in Notes Internacionals CIDOB in September 2017

• https://www.cidob.org/en/publications/publication_series/notes_internacionals/n1_180/affordable_housing_in_europe_innovative_public_policies_that_can_effectively_address_the_housing_crisis

• Summary:

  • The affordable housing crisis is an issue that cannot be hidden: in contrast to issues such as pollution, traffic jams, innovation or even tourism – which are intangible because they are difficult to measure or perceive from the individual point of view – the increased cost of living above employment income is a key problem for more than a third of citizens in the European Union, as all the important studies on the issue show.

  • Though the challenge of affordable housing in Europe has turned out to be huge, no single state seems to have been able to tackle it in a structural way.

  • The objective of this paper is to review the mechanisms used by the various states to tackle housing cycles and to indicate the future challenges that can be conceived in a context strongly marked by the circulation of capital and the digital transformation.

  • The data at European level show that most residents live in their own homes, and that rental tends to be a secondary option; homeowners have medium or high salaries, whereas renters tend to be those with fewer resources. (...)

  • This study seeks, on the one hand, to review the public policies implemented in the context of the end of a property cycle greatly affected by the financial crisis of ten years ago and, on the other, puts forward solutions that seem to have a greater chance of dealing with the problem in the future.

• Keywords: affordability, housing crisis, rental markets, property markets, tenants, landlords, public policy, housing policy, income, housing cycle, financial crisis