# 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