• Tenants faced damp and black mould while housing repairs stopped due to Covid-19

• By Karin Goodwin. Published on The Ferret, on 4 December 2020

• https://theferret.scot/tenants-call-for-action-on-housing-repairs/

• Summary:

  • Tenants denounce an "unacceptable repairs policy during the Covid-19 pandemic."

  • Many have faced damp, substantial leaks and black mould and are now calling for Scotland’s largest housing association to take action.

  • Some claim that they have been left facing issues which could leave their landlord in breach of housing standards legislation. They claimed their physical and mental health had been affected by the unaddressed problems in their homes.

• Keywords: Scotland, UK, housing market, right to housing, housing repairs, coronavirus, COVID-19, COVID19, corona

Warsaw, a particular history, a particular housing situation By Romain Su, foreign correspondent in Poland for French-language media https://romain.su 17 September 2020

Five historical elements are important to understand why Warsaw looks like it does, in particular in terms of housing:

• First, the city centre was entirely destroyed in 1944 after the failure of the uprising against German occupants.

• Second, on top of the nation-wide nationalisation policy pursued by the communist regime after the Second World War, in the specific case of Warsaw a special decree called "Bierut Decree" was adopted to nationalise the entire territory of Warsaw --land, not buildings-- and accelerate this way the reconstruction of the capital, since many owners were missing and waiting for their consent to rebuild this or that would have taken ages

• Third, after the end of the communist regime, as an allergic reaction to any kind of public planning, all zoning plans in Poland were scrapped in 2003. City councils were supposed to draft new plans after that, but still today only one third of Poland's territory is covered by zoning plans. Even in Warsaw, there are districts with no binding zoning plan, so that building permits are granted under ad-hoc special conditions called "wuzetka" that are not very stringent in terms of landscape, percentage of "biologically active areas" on plots, access to infrastructure…

• Fourth, another reaction to communism was a frenzy to privatise everything, so alike the UK under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, when council housing was massively sold to tenants. Poland did the same with a very large share of "public" housing (not only owned by the state, but also by city councils, large companies, trade unions, housing cooperatives…).

• Fifth, Poland is the only post-communist country in Central and Eastern Europe that has never adopted a general law settling all disputes over nationalisation. As a result, 30 years later, there are still thousands of cases pending in courts put forward by pre-war legal owners (more often their offspring) who lost their property as a result of nationalisation and now demand restitution, even if the property may have in the meantime been turned into a public service (school, hospital…) or sold off to other private persons who bought it in good faith, now knowing that it is the object of claims.

What does all this mean for housing in Warsaw today, and in a broader sense for many other cities in Poland?

1. Like other post-communist countries in Europe, Poland (and Warsaw) has a very high percentage of home ownership -- above 80% according to Eurostat.

2. As a result, the rental market is very tight and mostly addressed at students. In contrast for example to France, a very large share (if not perhaps the majority -- but we lack the hard figures to determine this) of flats or houses in the rental market are furnished, because this type of tenure is considered as temporary until tenants have enough savings and income stability to take a mortgage and buy a flat or stand-alone house.

3. Until recently, there was actually almost no construction of dwellings for rental purposes, so most dwellings on the rental market were so-called aunts’ or grandmothers’ flats -- after the death of an elderly, their children, already adult and settled in their own flat or home, would rent the dwelling turned empty. It is only since about 10 years ago that developers started to build dwellings (mostly flats) specifically addressed at "investors" (foreign pension funds, REITs, private individuals…) for rental purposes.

4. This has helped increase the available stock on the rental market, but since it is purely private-driven the profile of such flats is very standardized to be "marketable" (one or two rooms, overall surface usually under 50 sq. m. -- above these parameters flats would be too expensive for a majority of Poles), which also means that it is virtually impossible to find a large flat for rent if you have a large family, for example.

5. Despite various governmental initiatives launched in the past years (Fundusz Mieszkan na Wynajem, Mieszkanie Plus…), the contribution of public authorities to the construction of new dwellings is close to zero.

6. The existing publicly-owned housing stock is also very limited because of the privatisation policy of the 1990s, it mainly consists of so-called "social housing" reserved for the poorest households. Because rents are very small and because public authorities do not invest a lot in housing, social housing has serious maintenance problems, aggravated by the fact it tends to be old (the last housing construction boom in Poland was in the 1970s).

7. Since there is almost no dwellings for rental at regulated prices and as not everyone can afford to rent a flat on commercial terms or to take a mortgage and buy a flat in big cities like Warsaw, a common solution is to escape to neighbouring towns and build stand-alone houses there, where land is available and cheaper. This phenomenon of urban sprawl draws out people from big cities (many of them lose inhabitants, though it is less visible in Warsaw due to the inflow of Ukrainian migrants), shrinks their tax base, and increase congestion costs. And because these neighbouring towns tend to have no zoning plans, they look very chaotic and are not always able to provide basic amenities like sewage, public transport, kindergarten and schools…

8. For the "lucky" who managed to get ownership titles on the wave of the privatisation, the situation is not always rosy because many are indeed asset-rich, but income-poor. Since there is almost no wealth tax, homeowners are not under financial pressure to move to properties whose value is more suitable to their incomes. But it also means they cannot afford maintenance and renovation. Because there is no supply of accommodation for people with "special needs" (elderly, disabled…), the lock-in can be problematic: imagine you’re 80 and live in a flat on the 4h or 5th floor without elevator… and that is quite common.

9. Another consequence of the lack of policy is the ghettoisation trend. While "old" districts in Warsaw (and elsewhere) are fairly mixed from a social point of view, because of the indistinctive privatisation policy (under communist times workers could be offered very nice and well-located flats where they would be neighbours with engineers or other higher-class people), the newly built, like Miasteczko Wilanow or Bialoleka, are very homogeneous: 30-50-year-old middle class parents with one or two children, no senior, student, renter or "poorer" people. The question is what they will look like in 20 years when all these people become retired at the same time...

The Arena Housing Knowledge Base is a comprehensive repository of different kinds of informative resources regarding housing. It's part of the Arena Housing Project, an open collaborative network launched and coordinated by Arena for Journalism in Europe, a non-profit foundation promoting cross-border collaborative journalism.

The Arena Housing Knowledge Base is divided into seven topics:

• Access to housing

• Big landlords

• Empty homes

• Homelessness

• Land ownership

• Short-term rentals

• Social and public housing

Within each topic, different kinds of resources can be found: media, academic and other types of reports; data sets and visualisations; public policy and court cases; as well as notes on what kind of data and information is missing, and on research and reporting opportunities.

You can browse the different topics and types of resources, or you can use the search function to look up any particular words or expressions by clicking on the search icon on the top left corner of the screen, next to the Arena Housing Knowledge Base logo.

There are two extra sections: "City housing profiles", where Arena Housing network members write personal takes on the housing situation in their cities; and "To do".

Compiling data and information and processing to share it as knowledge is time consuming, and also we may miss interesting relevant information that's out there. That's why we think making this knowledge base grow is a community effort, and so you are welcome to take on any of the tasks listed in the >> To do section and to suggest new content for the knowledge base.

Also, please do let us know how useful and usable you find the Arena Housing Knowledge Base, and how we could make it better by working together.

• Prefabricated housing gains strength in Spain

• Original headline in Spanish: La vivienda industrializada coge fuerza en España

• By the Spanish news agency Efe. Published here in Expansión on 11 October 2020

• Summary (translated from Spanish through Google Translate):

  • The Plataforma para la Industrialización de Viviendas (PIV) has been presented this week to give a boost to a sector that should approach the levels of other European countries such as the United Kingdom, where 7% of housing construction is prefabricated; Germany, with about 9%; Holland, with 50%, or Sweden, where it reaches almost all of it.

  • In Spain, industrialized housing construction -which is also susceptible to export- does not even reach 1%.

• Keywords: prefabricated housing, construction, environment, Spain, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden

• Landlords slash rents by up to 20% as tenants quit city centres in pandemic

• By Rupert Jones. Published in the Guardian on 20 September 2020

• Summary:

  • According to estate agents, average rents in London are down by around 4% on a year ago, or 6% to 7% in the so-called “prime” areas.

  • The article quotes real estate agents saying "rents in and around the Barbican estate area had 'probably dropped 20% since lockdown', though he added that they were 'now creeping up again'; and that "(r)ents in Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell 'have probably fallen by at least 10%'".

  • "Data released by estate agent Hamptons this month showed that demand from people looking to rent in city locations across Britain is down 23%."
• Keywords: London, England, UK, Britain, coronavirus, Covid-19, pandemic, rental prices

These days, we are flooded with available data and information and misinformation. Compiling and processing accurate data and information to make it public as useful and usable knowledge takes time.

We think growing this knowledge base grow is a community effort, also because the Arena Housing Knowledge Base's aim is to serve a diverse community, which will also help us all not to miss interesting and relevant data and information that's out there.

That's why here we are listing some of the tasks we would like to carry out, and you are welcome to help us do so and to suggest content for the knowledge base. If you would like to do any of this, please get in touch with Jose Miguel Calatayud, Arena Housing Project director, at jose@journalismarena.eu

To do

• Go over the court cases and jurisprudence database maintained by Housing Rights Watch to include more information about court cases under their corresponding categories here in the Arena Housing Knowledge Base: http://housingrightswatch.org/jurisprudence

• Review the US-based and -focused databases on housing here to come up with data research opportunities in Europe: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wZhPLMCHKJvwOkP4juclhjFgqIY8fQFMemwKL2c64vk

• Process this dataset and look for additional information to include here: Privately owned public spaces in Greater London, https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/privately-owned-public-spaces

• Compile relevant data sets and visualisations from the International Monetary Fund's Global Housing Watch site to include them here under the appropriate categories: https://www.imf.org/external/research/housing/

• Throwing people out of their homes is not a pleasant task. But in Spain, where almost 150 apartments are evicted every day, someone has to take care of them. For example Paco

• Original title in German: Menschen aus ihrer Wohnung zu werfen, ist keine angenehme Aufgabe. Aber in Spanien, wo fast 150 Wohnungen jeden Tag zwangsgeräumt werden, muss sie jemand erledigen. Zum Beispiel Paco

• By Linda Osusky. Published in Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 28 August 2020

• https://www.nzz.ch/gesellschaft/der-rausschmeisser-ld.1572089

• Summary (translated into English with DeepL):

  • "Every day, the court of L'Hospitalet initiates between ten and twelve forced eviction proceedings. This corresponds to a quarter of all procedures in Catalonia, the region with the most evictions in Spain. At the height of the housing crisis in 2012, nearly 200 households were evicted every day in Spain. Although the number has declined since then. But even in 2019 there were still just under 147 evictions per day, almost twice as many as before the crisis."

  • "Paco's agenda is full. Twelve appointments are today. Unpleasant appointments. Paco is a court clerk in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, a suburb of Barcelona, where he carries out forced evictions. The first person Paco is supposed to throw out of her house today is Denise."

  • "Paco stands next to Denise with a serious expression on his face. He actually does not want to put her on the street. He stands between the owner's representative and the tenant. A mediator from the city is trying to mediate and obtain a postponement of the eviction. The owner's representative calls for a few minutes. Then he smiles and nods. The PAH activists give cries of joy."

  • "How is Paco doing with his role? "I like my work, although it is unpleasant, because I literally put people on the street, albeit in the name of justice," he says. Paco was once an IT technician. After a few years, he decided to become a civil servant. Because of the job security that the private sector had not offered him. He has been working at the court since the early 1990s. In 2015, Paco was honored for his work by PAH L'Hospitalet of all places. "There comes a time when a judgment must be implemented, and I try to do it as humanely as possible," Paco said in a TV interview at the time."

• Keywords: L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, evictions, Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), courts

• The Golden Ticket — Citizenship for Sale

• By Fredrik Gertten and Leilani Farha. Published on PUSHBACK Talks on 4 September 2020

• Podcast episode available here: https://pushbacktalks.buzzsprout.com/1189295/5292301-the-golden-ticket-citizenship-for-sale

• Summary:

  • In this episode, the PUSHBACK Talks podcast crew explores the dark world of Golden Visas "which emerged after the Global Financial Crisis on the advice of the IMF and the Central European Bank as a way for economically failing countries to access big cash."

  • In 2019, the European Commission warned against the risks of handing out 'golden visas' to wealthy foreigners, noting that it could increase the risk of corruption and money laundering if the organised crime groups end up infiltrating the European countries. Despite the warning, the residence-for-pay schemes continue to be widespread across the EU, and as of summer 2019, residence-for-sale visa schemes existed across 20 EU member states.

  • "This has led to a massive influx of corrupt money into these economies, while inflating housing costs for local residents," note the PUSHBACK Talks hosts.

  • Keywords: EU, Golden Visa, housing cost, rental cost, rent hike, corruption, Cyprus residence-for-pay

Vienna, still affordable but also in need of reforms By journalist Linda Osusky, https://www.osusky.at 14 September 2020

Vienna is one of the few metropolis where renting a flat is still quite affordable compared to other European cities. Average rent including operating costs except electricity, gas, internet are 8,42/m2 in 2019. The source is Statistik Austria. Included are also old rent contracts.

The two main reasons for Vienna’s housing market still being quite affordable are municipal social housing with a 100-year-long tradition, and a rental cap for all buildings built before 1945 (and some more which are specified by law).

The city has 30% of municipal social housing, where half a million Viennese live. The city is subsidising another 25% of all flats. Considering the big share of flats in buildings built before 1945, the share of regulated rents comes up to approximately 75%. Thus the free rental market is minimal in comparison to other cities.

Historically, Vienna before 1920 was similar to other global metropolis at that time with miserable housing conditions. If you are interested in history, I strongly recommend the documentation of the journalist and activist of that time Max Winter. His accounts of the social situation in Vienna of the 1920s are very vivid, entertaining and shocking.

Of course rents are on the rise and it is getting more difficult to find affordable housing also in Vienna. Short-term rent is also on the rise as well as proliferation of tourist flats offered via Airbnb & Co. So Vienna and Austria as well need reforms. E.g. there are flaws in the assignment system for getting a flat in a „Gemeindebau“ (as the social housing flats are called). Construction of social housing was reduced during the 1990s because urban planners were expecting the city to shrink. But contrary to this prediction, the fall of communism in neighbouring countries, the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia and the extension of the EU towards the east led to a doubling of inhabitants in almost 20 years. In 2000, Vienna had around 1,2 million inhabitants, today it has 1,9 million.

Fortunately, the city’s reaction to the changing demographics was to intensify construction of social and affordable housing. Big projects, like the „Seestadt Aspern“ (for around 20.000 people) or the former „Nordbahnhof“ area, as well as many other smaller projects, were realised in recent years. This summer, during my visit there, I could witness that the city continues constructing more housing with a lot of activities going on in many parts of the city, but mainly on the periphery.

But the problem of big investors buying up whole buildings with the aim to renovate and make luxury apartments is also appearing, as you can read here. But for the moment such cases do not seem to reflect a major tendency (yet).

Concerning the free (unregulated) market prices raised significantly: 35% between 2008 and 2016. In the same period, income increased by 22%.

Another nice thing are new (experimental) forms of housing projects, where a group of people and families align with architects, city council, experts, etc., and develop their own building. One such project is https://wohnprojekt.wien/projekt, where 65 adults and children joined together to build a sustainable house with around 40 flats, shared spaces, a roof terrace, a library, guest flats, etc.

• Housing market is at its most unequal in a decade, experts say

• By Sky News, published on 12 October 2020

• Summary:

  • Despite the UK entering a recession, the market is booming, with house prices rising 5% on an annual basis in September.

  • However, considering the state of the economy, lenders are anxious and many aren't granting mortgages to those with smaller deposits.

  • "These two concurrent trends mean that despite the boom, there's increasing inequality in housing, with the less well off and many first time buyers even further away from entering the market."

  • This is leaving a lot of younger, first-buyers excluded from the market. The experts say that the housing market is the most unequal it's been in a decade.

• Keywords: housing market, right to housing, mortgage, housing prices, inequality, lenders, first-time buyers, inequality

• Podcast: US election special #3 – the housing crisis (part 2)

• By Aaron White and Freddie Stuart. Published on openDemocracy on 1 September 2020

• https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/podcast-us-election-special-3-the-housing-crisis-part-2/

• Summary:

  • In this podcast episode, openDemocracy explores how social movements are reshaping the political discourse on housing in the context of the 2020 US election.

  • This podcast episode considers the failure of existing policy frameworks to deal with the housing crisis, and examines "how popular movements are proposing radical new policies that are reshaping the political discourse on housing in the US."

  • Context: During and after the coronavirus crisis, in the last six months, the US economy has seen its sharpest decline since records began – with over 57 million Americans filing for unemployment relief. "There is not a single US state where the number of affordable homes to let matches the number of low-income people looking to rent."

  • "With eviction moratoriums now lifting across the country and Congress stalling over a new relief package, recent reports suggest that up to 43 million Americans could face eviction in the coming months."

  • Since the “welfare reforms” of Bill Clinton’s second term, the Faircloth Amendment has limited the total number of government-owned public housing units, by law, to its 1999 level. Severely dilapidated public housing has been demolished and sold off to private developers. Only 2 million units of legacy public housing remain, in a country of 330 million people, and successive administrations have turned to government subsidies to “incentivize” low-income construction in the private sector.

  • Even as demand for housing has intensified, the number of new units actually created has fallen - from over 70,000 per year in 1997 to less than 60,000 by 2014. Over the same period, the public cost of the program has increased by 66%.

  • "In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, international social movements such as Occupy, introduced wealth inequality and structural critiques of our economic system into the political discourse." Even when these protests ended, the underlying conditions which are really driven the financialization of housing and of urban land did not change.

  • Nowadays, activists are pushing for rent control to be adopted on a federal level. "Currently, “36 states preempt local governments from adopting rent regulation laws” and as of 2019, only five states (California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon) and the District of Columbia have localities in which some form of residential rent control is in effect." If adopted nationwide, 42 million households could see their rents stabilized.

  • This year, progressive democrats and other organisations are championing a bold new agenda for federal and local housing policy – the “Homes Guarantee”. It begins with the simple premise: that housing is a human right, and calls for building 12 million social housing units over the next 10 years, and reinvesting $30 billion annually over five years to repair crumbling housing stock. It also recognizes the climate crisis as the greatest displacement threat.

  • Those proposing a bold social housing agenda in the US, often quote notable examples od public housing in Sweden and Vienna.

  • Also, during the 2020 Democratic primary, Senator Bernie Sanders released one of the boldest housing plans ever by a presidential candidate. "Taking direct inspiration from the Homes Guarantee platform, Sanders called for an investment of $2.5 trillion to build 10 million affordable housing units and end homelessness."

  • The now Democratic nominee Joe Biden proposed that every eligible extremely low income individual receives a voucher – and none pay more than 30% of their income in rent. "It also proposes a new renters tax credit to cover rent and utility costs over 30% of income for families that “make too much money” to qualify for Section 8 – and creates a permanent, refundable $15,000 tax credit to help first-time homebuyers make a downpayment on a home." However, "his housing agenda does not consider an expansion of rent control, nor does it address the fundamental undersupply of affordable units."

• Keywords: US, elections, housing crisis, discrimination, privatisation, privatization, financialisation, financialization, Trump, social housing, coronavirus, Covid19, Covid-19, activism, rent control, affordable housing, Biden

• This is Propify, the platform that completely digitizes the rental of housing

• Original headline in Spanish: Así es Propify, la plataforma que digitaliza por completo el alquiler de vivienda

• Published in El Periódico on 1 September 2020

• https://byzness.elperiodico.com/es/innovadores/20200901/asi-es-propify-la-plataforma-que-digitaliza-por-completo-el-alquiler-de-vivienda-8095713

• Summary:

  • Even though this article is basically a PR piece, it's interesting because it offers some insights into the so-called "proptech", digital applications designed mostly to manage rental property, and because how mainstream media often reproduce this kind of PR content without apparently giving any thought to the social, economic and political implications of outsourcing the management of rental property to new digital apps.

  • In this case, the company is selling an app that aims at digitising the whole process, from advertising the property, to renting it out, to collecting the rent, and says it'll benefit both landlords and tenants by making them save time and money.

  • It has some particularly interesting features, as when the company says it has reached an agreement with the mutual insurance company of landlords to guarantee that the app's customers will get the rent paid by the 8th of every month regardless of whether the tenant actually pays it.

  • The English-language Wikpedia has an article on proptech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_technology

• Keywords: Spain, proptech, rental housing, landlords, tenants

• Housing. Rents fall in Lisbon for the first time in six years

• Original headline in Portuguese: Habitação. Rendas caem em Lisboa pela primeira vez em seis anos

• By Vítor Andrade. Published in Expresso on 8 July 2020

• https://expresso.pt/economia/2020-07-08-Habitacao.-Rendas-caem-em-Lisboa-pela-primeira-vez-em-seis-anos

• Summary through Google Translate:

  • For the first time in six years, housing rents in Lisbon dropped 1.8% in the first quarter of this year - compared to the same period last year.

  • According to the Confidencial Imobiliário database, the last negative change dates back to the fourth quarter of 2013 (-1.7%).

  • Since the end of 2017, rents in Lisbon have been losing pace, going from a year-on-year increase of around 19% then recorded, to around 12% at the end of 2018 and, in a new contraction, to 1.4% at the end of 2019 , also note the analysts of Confidencial Imobiliário.

• Keywords: Lisbon, Porto, Portugal, rental housing, rental prices, data sources

• Podcast: US election special #3 – the housing crisis (part 1)

• By Aaron White and Freddie Stuart. Published on openDemocracy on 5 August 2020

• https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/podcast-us-election-special-3-the-housing-crisis-part-1/

• Summary:

  • In this podcast episode, openDemocracy explores the history of discrimination and privitization that has shaped modern housing policy in the US.

  • The podcast digs deeper into the history of US federal housing policy, and places "the negligence of Trump’s tenure in the context of decades of underinvestment and privatization by successive administrations."

  • Context: In the US today, the number of households who are renting is near postwar highs, and since the 2008 recession, home ownership has dropped by 6%. 17% of households pay over half their income in rent, another fifth pay over a third. There's no US state where a person paid a minimum-wage can afford to rent or own a one-bedroom dwelling.

  • The housis crisis has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic. In April, almost 1 in 3 Americans didn't pay their rent. Now, "with federal unemployment insurance set to expire at the end of July, and eviction bans lifting across the country, some experts believe that “between 20 million and 28 million” people could face eviction between now and September."

  • The authors argue that history of the politics of land and housing reveals the racism and inequality has been at the foundation of American society since its inception. Following the Civil War, "freed slaves went from being property, to workers living in desperate poverty." Many newly freed people were obligated to pay rent on the land by giving a portion of their crop to the white landowners.

  • Between 1915 and 1930, over 6 million black people relocated from the South to the North. Then, in 1929, the stock market crashed, and Millions of Americans lost their housing in the Great Depression.

  • Following the stock market crash, President Roosevelt passed the National Housing Act of 1934 as part of his New Deal plan. But, the Home Owners Loan Corporation "created residential security maps to assess the credit worthiness of certain neighborhoods." The “best” areas in were in green, blue were for “good people”, yellow for “working class families” and red for quote “detrimental influences”. These red zones invariably included areas with significant minority populations. Black neighborhoods were often labelled as as “risky” and thus denied access to government-backed mortgages. This became known as “Redlining”.

  • Following the Second World War, returning veterans were granted a range of benefits from the 1944 Servicemen's Readjustment Act. But “redlining” by financial institutions excluded the nearly 1.2 million black people returning from the war.

  • "As federal and local policies excluded the development of black community wealth, America’s post-war population became increasingly segregated."

  • Despite many successful and important campaigns and actions led by the civil right movements, despite the race riots and Fair Housing Act’s attempting to deal with discrimination, deep, systemic biases in America's housing market have persisted.

  • "The 1980s saw pervasive racial discrimination by banks, real-estate agents and landlords, as well as an orgy of commercial property speculation."

  • In 1992, when Congress authorized the Hope VI program that sought to replace "what it designated as “severely distressed public housing” with “mixed-income” developments through federal grants." Yet, it did not replenish the supply of affordable housing for tenants that lost their residences. It was rather used as a loophole by private developers to demolish “tens of thousands” of public housing units that were not initially categorised as “severely distressed”.

  • Fast forward to Trump’s administration that suggested eliminating the Community Development Block Grant program. Despite being unsuccessful, the administration has re-proposed its removal in 2021.

• Keywords: US, elections, housing crisis, discrimination, privatisation, privatization, financialisation, financialization, Trump, race, racism, Housing Act, redlining, speculation

• Tenants 'sidelined' as landlords lobby for extra Covid-19 subsidy

• By Ally Tibbitt. Published on The Ferret on 28 July 2020

• https://theferret.scot/landlord-lobbying-coronavirus-subsidy-living-rent/

• Summary:

  • In Scotland, landlord lobbyists pressured Scottish Government officials for further coronavirus subsidies. Lobby groups also wanted to open the scheme up so that private landlords with more than five rental properties could benefit.

  • “Although the scheme currently remains limited to landlords with five our fewer properties, action notes show that civil servants responded to the call by offering a dedicated email for landlords who did not qualify for the existing scheme so they could set-out their circumstances.”

  • The article quotes the figures provided by the Scottish Government that indicate that 30 subsidised loan offers have so far been made to landlords, and only nine of the approved loans cover properties that are occupied.

• Keywords: coronavirus, Covid-19, UK, Scotland housing conditions, subsidy, tenants rights, landlords, private landlords, lobbying

• Government will add more than 18,600 houses in the affordable income housing program

• Original headline in Portuguese: Governo vai inserir mais de 18.600 casas no programa habitação com renda acessível

• By Vítor Andrade. Published in Observador on 29 July 2020

• Summary through Google Translate:

  • The initiative aims not only to respond to the lack of affordable housing, but also to give an injection of vitality to the construction sector, which is also in crisis due to the pandemic.

  • The properties to be readapted into affordable housing include the old pediatric hospital of Coimbra, the psychiatric hospital Magalhães de Lemos, in Vila do Conde, vacant palaces, old convents, houses, land, farms, apartment blocks and much more.

  • Of the (supposed) total of 18660 dwellings , 20% will be transferred to the municipalities, and many others may be turned over to public-community partnerships.

• Keywords: Portugal, affordable housing, rental prices, housing prices, Covid-19, construction sector

• Covid-19 shows we need a new housing direction in Ireland

• By Dr Rory Hearne (Author of the book Housing Shock: The Irish Housing Crisis & How to Solve it). Published in the Irish Examiner on 3 June 2020

• https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-31002971.html

• Summary:

  • The pandemic has exposed the vast inequalities and dysfunctions of Ireland’s housing system

  • Dr Hearne argues that "The dominant housing policy paradigm has treated housing as an investment asset rather than its vital role as a home that ensures the health and dignity of those living in it."

  • He also highlights that in his book, Housing Shock, he identified the structural problems in the Irish housing system, "including the overreliance on the private market and global investors to provide housing." Ireland went from building 5,300 social housing units a year in 2009 to just 400 units in 2017.

  • From the article:

    • "Private housing supply is likely to reduce as investors and developers shelve projects in the face of falling rents and house prices. Wage cuts and unemployment will mean fewer mortgage approvals. Landlords will have to reduce rents."

    • A permanent home will become even more out of reach for Generation Rent. Demand for student accommodation could fall as students live at home rather than house share.

    • He calls for a national housing plan that aims to bring Ireland’s public housing stock (currently just 9% of all housing is social housing) up to levels in countries with the most successful housing systems such as the Netherlands (30% of housing is social housing) and Austria (where 43% of housing in Vienna is public housing).

    • He further calls for the creation of a dedicated Affordable Sustainable Homes Building agency. It would be a public enterprise body that would ensure "the building of between 20,000 and 30,000 new public “affordable and sustainable homes” every year, for the next decade and a major retrofitting programme."

• Keywords: coronavirus, Covid-19, Ireland, housing conditions, access to housing, housing policy, public housing

• The housing pandemic: four graphs showing the link between COVID-19 deaths and the housing crisis

• By Nathaniel Barker. Published in Inside Housing on 29 May 2020

• https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/the-housing-pandemic-four-graphs-showing-the-link-between-covid-19-deaths-and-the-housing-crisis-66562

• Summary:

  • The four graphics are:

    • COVID-19 death rates versus housing overcrowding

    • COVID-19 death rates versus prevalence of HMOs (Houses in multiple occupations)

    • COVID-19 death rates versus homelessness

    • COVID-19 death rates versus social housing shortage

  • From the text of the article:

    • "Live in poor-quality, cramped, unsuitable accommodation and you are more likely to suffer from a wide range of illnesses, such as cancer and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

    • In 2015, the Building Research Establishment estimated that poor housing costs the NHS at least £1.4bn a year. Yet, despite the growing body of evidence, the disconnect between housing policy and health policy remains steadfast.

    • Now, the coronavirus pandemic – described by prime minister Boris Johnson as “the worst public health crisis for a generation” – has thrown the problems into sharp relief. With more than 37,000 people having lost their lives to COVID-19, the UK has the highest number of deaths in Europe and second-most globally.

    • While a myriad of factors have contributed to the high number of deaths, housing conditions are likely to have played a key part. At the start of the month, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released shocking figures showing that poorer areas of the country have significantly higher coronavirus mortality rates."

• Regulatory levels: local, national (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland; UK), EU

• Keywords: coronavirus, Covid-19, UK, housing conditions, public health, data

• House bank valuation reaches new record in June

• Original headline in Portuguese: Avaliação bancária da habitação atinge novo recorde em Junho

• Published on Publico.pt on 28 July 2020

• https://www.publico.pt/2020/07/28/economia/noticia/avaliacao-bancaria-habitacao-atinge-novo-recorde-junho-1926164

• Summary (via Google Translate):

  • The article focuses on the rise of the median value of bank valuation (used to determine the loan to value ratio in a home loan application and will impact the amount that a bank is willing to lend) in Portugal.

  • "The median value was 1209 euros / m2 in apartments and 971 euros / m2 in houses, both of which grew more than 8% in the past month." The median value of bank valuation rose by one euro, to 1115 euros per square meter (m2) in June compared to the previous month.

  • The highest values ​​were observed in the Algarve (1612 euros / m2) and in the Metropolitan Area of ​​Lisbon (1483 euros / m2), with the central region registering the lowest value (844 euros / m2).

• Keywords: Portugal, housing market, property market, real estate market, housing prices, financialisation, financialization

• Belgian non-profit multimedia collective Sonderland devoted 2019 to investigate and report on housing, and they published stories on their own platform as well as through mainstream media partners.

• https://portfolio.sonder.land

• Sonderland publishes in Flemish, and some of the stories of its project are [as translated through Google Translate]:

  • Explained: the housing case, the housing bonus

  • The (un)sense of suing our housing policy: 'Judges already have enough work'

  • From housing bonus to lower registration fees: zero operation or hidden savings?

  • Brotherhood at the Belgian Homeless Cup

  • Desperate tenants and disaffected staff at housing company ABC

  • After the climate case, now the home?

• Keywords: Belgium, Flanders, homelessness, social housing, migrants, refugees, housing policy, court cases

• 'Coronavirus: the excessive mortality rate in Seine-Saint-Denis, explained by bad housing and by people from there being overrepresented in those who had to kept going to their work places, according to the ORS'

• Original headline in French: Coronavirus : la surmortalité en Seine-Saint-Denis expliquée par le mal-logement et la sur-représentation d'habitants qui sont allés travailler, selon l'ORS

• Published in France Info on 12 May 2020

• https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/coronavirus/coronavirus-la-surmortalite-en-seine-saint-denis-expliquee-par-le-mal-logement-et-la-sur-representation-d-habitants-qui-sont-alles-travailler-selon-l-ors_3960699.html

• Summary:

  • The Observatoire régional de santé (ORS) d'Île-de-France, the region where Paris is, has published a report that highlights that the department of Seine-Saint-Denis had the highest excessive mortality rate in the region between 1 March and 10 April 2020, with an increase of 118.4%.

  • The ORS said the people from there was more at risk of getting infected because "their housing conditions are quite unfavourable", with "homes that are smaller and house more people, have less space per person, and more children and infants".

  • The repor notes that in those circumstances it's quite difficult to implement protective measures, and that even if those are respected the fact that more people share the common spaces also contributes to the risk of infection.

• Regulatory levels: regional (Île-de-France), national (French), EU (single market, regulations that restrict the construction of public housing in member states).

• Keywords: coronavirus, Covid-19, France, Île-de-France, Seine-Saint-Denis, Observatoire régional de santé (ORS), mortality, public health

• Also useful because:

• Migrants face housing discrimination in Germany

• By Friedel Taube. Published on Deutsche Welle on 29 January 2020

• https://www.dw.com/en/migrants-face-housing-discrimination-in-germany/a-52193155

• Summary:

  • The article reports about a new study by the federal anti-discrimination office that found that more than a third of people from migrant backgrounds looking for an apartment have experienced discrimination because of their origins.

  • Because of their origins, 53% said they were excluded at a later stage of the apartment application process. One out of four said they paid more rent or a higher sales price for a property than German applicants.

  • Of course, such discrimination in the housing market is prohibited by law and those affected have the possibility to take action against it. However, since the housing market in Germany is tight, many people feel that they are at the mercy of the landlord.

  • When it comes to landlords, some 41% of the people interviewed said they find the idea of renting their own apartment to a migrant worrying and 83% said they suspected racial discrimination was in fact frequent in the housing market.

• Keywords: Germany, discrimination, migrants, migrant discrimination, Equal Treatment Act, housing market, rental market, anti-discrimination, racial discrimination.

• Airbnb in Lisbon: Number of accommodations increases from 3 to 49 thousand in nine years

• Original headline in Portuguese: Airbnb em Lisboa.Número de alojamentos passa de 3 para 49 mil em nove anos

• Published in Expresso on 27 July 2019 (behind the paywall)

• https://expresso.pt/economia/2019-07-27-Airbnb-em-Lisboa.Numero-de-alojamentos-passa-de-3-para-49-mil-em-nove-anos

• Summary (via Google Translate):

  • The number of properties listed on the Airbnb booking platform rose from just three in 2009 to 48,785 on 10/23/2018, when the new local accommodation law came into force.

  • In just ten months of 2018, the number of properties listed on this digital platform grew more than in the first six years of Airbnb's presence on AML.

  • The top 25 homeowners on the Airbnb platform made almost € 25 million in one year

• Keywords: Portugal, Lisbon, Airbnb, short-term rentals, affordability, tourism, tourist accommodation

• Denmark to invest 4bn euros in renovating public housing

• Original headline in Danish: Almene boliger skal renoveres for 30 milliarder - se aftalen her

• Published in Nyheder TV2 on 19 May 2020

• ​https://nyheder.tv2.dk/politik/2020-05-19-almene-boliger-skal-renoveres-for-30-milliarder-se-aftalen-her​

• Summary:

  • The Danish Parliament agreed to earmark around 4 billion euros (30 billion Danish Krone) for renovating public housing between 2020 and 2026.

  • The measure had been first announced by the Danish PM, Mette Frederiksen, on 1 May, it will prioritise 'green initiatives' and one out of seven workers engaged will be an apprentice.

  • On paper and a priori, this all sounds quite good to help Denmark through these complicated times: improving housing conditions via public investment supporting green initiatives and promoting job apprenticeships.

  • Then, of course, journalists should follow up on the actual implementation of these measures.

  • And we should also consider that the public authorities just own 9.96% of all the dwellings (and only 1.85% of "dwellings with registered population"), according to the data from Statistics Denmark: https://www.statbank.dk/statbank5a/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?MainTable=BOL101&PLanguage=1&PXSId=0&wsid=cftree​

  • And we should also remember the so-called 'Ghetto law' in Denmark, which from 1 January 2020 means that areas labelled as "ghettos" may contain no more than 40% of public housing stock. You can read more about that here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/how-denmarks-ghetto-list-is-ripping-apart-migrant-communities​

• Regulatory levels: national (Denmark)

• Keywords: coronavirus, Covid-19, Denmark, public housing, Ghetto law

• After the tourist boom in Lisbon, the housing crisis

• Original headline in Portuguese: Depois do "boom" turístico em Lisboa, a crise na habitação

• Published in Contacto, 12 September 2019

• https://www.wort.lu/pt/portugal/depois-do-boom-tur-stico-em-lisboa-a-crise-na-habitac-o-5d79fef0da2cc1784e34b617

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • Owners and tenants say that one of the main factors responsible for the increase in rent and housing prices in the Portuguese capital is the foreign investment into the real estate market, mainly through Gold Visas

  • To obtain such a visa, the foreign citizens would need to invest 500 thousand euros, which caused a rise in real estate investments - and fewer apartments available for local renters.

  • In 2018, there was a 20% drop in lease contracts in Lisbon, and a similar drop - resulting in even higher rents - was likely to happen in 2019

  • The article notes that rents in Lisbon reach 20 euros per square meter, resulting in values ​​of 2,000 euros for houses of 100 square meters.

• Keywords: Portugal, Lisbon, short-term rentals,, affordability, tourism, tourist accommodation, Golden visas, foreign investment

• In favour of a "universal housing service" (behind a paywall)

• Original headline in French: Pour "un service universel du logement"

• An Opinion piece by the economist Marc de Basquiat. Published in Le Monde on 11 September 2019

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • The economist Marc de Basquiat calls for a "housing for all policy" that would allow everyone to have a home : the State would issue payment guarantees to secure the property owners

  • 40 billion euros of public money are poured each year into housing in France. Marc de Basquiat proposes to "reverse the equation" and not give money, but directly provide housing to all households that express a need, asking them to participate according to their means.

• Keywords: France, housing, access to housing, rent control, housing for all

• Airbnb already earns more than € 2,000 per month for each Lisbon owner

• Original headline in Portuguese: Airbnb já rende mais de €2 mil por mês a cada proprietário de Lisboa

• Published in Expresso, 11 August 2019 (behind the paywall)

• https://expresso.pt/economia/2019-08-11-Airbnb-ja-rende-mais-de-2-mil-por-mes-a-cada-proprietario-de-Lisboa

• Summary (via Google Translate):

  • Short-term rentals through the Airbnb digital booking platform already earn a monthly average of over € 889 per property and € 2084 per owner in the Portuguese capital

  • The calculations are based on Airbnb's own official data between 24 October 2017 and 23 October 2018, before a new local law on accommodation law entered into force in Portugal

  • The article features a map showing the approximate location of the entire houses or apartments listed on Airbnb, red stands the private rooms and yellow for shared rooms. The maps are predominantly blue and red.

• Keywords: Portugal, Lisbon, short-term rentals, Airbnb, affordability, tourism, tourist accommodation

• Deutsche Wohnen announces its own rental cover

• Original headline in German: Deutsche Wohnen kündigt eigenen Mietendeckel an

• Published in Der Spiegel, 22 June 2019

• https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/deutsche-wohnen-kuendigt-eigenen-mietendeckel-an-a-1273822.html

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • Price cap and impending expropriation: Real estate companies like Deutsche Wohnen have recently come under pressure in Berlin. Now the company wants to defuse the discussion - with its own rules.

  • In the discussion about rapidly increasing rents, Deutsche Wohnen is approaching its critics: From 1 July 2019, rent increases would be limited so that a household would have to spend a maximum of 30% of its net income on the net cold rent, the real estate company announced on Saturday on its website.

  • This voluntary commitment applies both to rent increases based on the respective local rent index and to rent increases after modernizations. These measures are intended to take away the fear of tenants losing their homes. In addition, every fourth new apartment to be rented should be given to tenants who are entitled to a residence permit.

• Keywords: Germany, rental freeze, rental cover, rental cap, Deutsche Wohnen, affordability, big landlords

• Which EU countries have seen the biggest rise in house prices?

• Published on Euronews, 20 June 2019

• https://www.euronews.com/2019/06/20/the-biggest-rises-and-falls-in-european-housing-prices

• Summary:

  • Euronews analysed the data on housing prices in the EU, released by Eurostat.

  • In 2018, the price of housing in Portugal (by 10.3%) and Ireland (10.2%) has risen the most in the European Union.

  • The price of housing fell in only two EU countries in 2018, compared with the previous year. Italy and Sweden experienced a drop of -0.6% and -0.9% respectively.

• Keywords: EU, Eurostat, house prices, Portugal, Ireland, affordability, housing ownership

• New Rent Laws Pass in N.Y.: ‘The Pendulum Is Swinging’ Against Landlords

• By Vivian Wang. Published in the New York Times on 14 June 2019

• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/nyregion/rent-laws-ny-deal.html

• Summary:

  • New York lawmakers on Friday passed a sweeping package of rent laws designed to dramatically enhance tenant protections and reshape the state’s housing landscape, after a monthslong battle that galvanized tenant activists and dealt a blow to the state’s powerful real estate industry.

  • The laws signaled a seismic shift not only in the relationship between tenants and landlords, but also in the power balance of Albany, where deep-pocketed developers had long enjoyed access and influence. (...)

  • The laws would immediately transform life for the 2.4 million people who live in roughly one million rent-regulated apartments in New York City, by closing loopholes that have allowed landlords to raise rents or deregulate properties. The existing rent laws were to expire on Saturday.

  • The legislation’s reach could also extend much farther in the coming weeks: Localities statewide will be allowed to adopt their own rent regulations, which had previously been limited to New York City and a few suburbs.

  • And other protections, such as limits on security deposits and protections against evictions, would apply to all renters, stabilized or not.

  • The real estate industry had lobbied fiercely against the proposed changes, warning that they would discourage landlords from investing in properties and erode thousands of building workers’ and contractors’ jobs. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ad campaigns, hired well-connected lobbyists and pleaded their case directly to Mr. Cuomo and other top state officials.

  • But their appeals met skepticism, and sometimes outright hostility, from the state’s newly empowered Democrats, who took over the Legislature last year for only the third time in the last half-century.

• Keywords: United States, US, USA, New York, rental laws, regulation, big landlords, affordability

• Point-based house renting in the Netherlands: a centuries-old tradition against speculating with property

• Original headline in Spanish: El alquiler por puntos en Holanda: una tradición centenaria contra la especulación

• By Alberto Arnaldo. Published in Eldiario.es on 1 June 2019

• https://www.eldiario.es/internacional/alquiler-Holanda-tradicion-centenaria-especulacion_0_905010121.html

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • Since 1917, the Dutch institutions have maintained the Huurcommissie, or Rental Commission. The arrival of refugees in a country that chose to remain neutral in the First World War, along with a break in housing construction due to the conflict, created the perfect scenario for the appearance of rents with abusive prices. (...)

  • The Huurcommissie has been balancing the balance between speculation and the right to housing for more than a hundred years. Several modifications, the last one in 2010 to centralize the multiple local commissions in one, have shaped the range of current mechanisms and powers of the entity.

  • Despite the fact that it does not promote its services as an impartial body and consequently it is little known even among the Dutch themselves, anyone who rents a house or room in the country has the right to request their intermediation to clarify issues such as community expenses, the need for repairs and maintenance or the amount of the rent, determined based on a point system.

• Keywords: Netherlands, rental control, rental laws, affordability, speculation, big landlords, investment funds, investment banks, regulation

• Housing and racism: a year-long investigation into discrimination

• Original headline in French: Logement et racisme : un an d’enquête sur les discriminations

• By Timothée Boutry. Published in Le Parisien on 6 May 2019

• https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/logement-et-racisme-un-an-d-enquete-sur-les-discriminations-06-05-2019-8066877.php

• Summary:

  • The article presents the results of a year-long investigation by the NGO SOS Racisme into the phenomenon of racial discrimination in the region of Ile-de-France (Parisian region).

  • The NGO responded to 775 real estate rental ads in all the departments of the Ile-de-France region, using the same (fake) profile of the aspiring tenant, and changing only their last name.

  • A person with an Asian sounding last name has a 15% less chance of getting a flat than a person of French origin (or French-sounding name); a person from Maghreb/of Maghreb descent has 28% less chance of getting a flat than a French, and a person from overseas or sub-Saharan Africa has 38% less chance.

  • Rental price didn't have any impact on discrimination. However, the investigation found that individual landlords tend to discriminate more than rental agencies (in 87% and 68% of cases respectively).

• Keywords: France, Ile-de-France, racism, discrimination, racial discrimination, race, racism, housing market, rental market, Paris, SOS racisme

• Ibiza makes clear the real estate madness: housing costs 40% more than in 2008

• Original headline in Spanish: Ibiza escenifica la locura inmobiliaria: la vivienda cuesta un 40% más que en 2008

• By Elena Sanz. Published in El Confidencial on 25 April 2019

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • If there is a market that has led the real estate recovery together with Madrid and Barcelona, ​​that has been the Balearic Islands. Spurred on by geographic limitations -the land to build new homes is finite-, the boom in tourist rental and the enormous boost in foreign demand -which signs 30% of transactions-, housing prices have skyrocketed in the last four years to the point that what seemed impossible, returning to bubble levels, has not only happened, but in some localities the records of a decade ago have been pulverized.

  • Specifically, only two Spanish towns have already exceeded their all-time highs at the end of 2018 , and both are in the Balearic Islands. These are Ibiza, which is 38% above the maximum recorded in February 2008, and Calvià, with prices 1.6% higher than those set then.

• Keywords: Ibiza, Balearic Islands, Spain, housing prices, housing affordability, housing accessibility, foreign demand, tourist rentals,

• Housing crisis on Arran leaves hundreds of islanders without homes

• By Severin Carrell and James McEnaney. Published in the Guardian on 22 April 2019

• https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/22/housing-crisis-on-arran-leaves-hundreds-of-islanders-without-homes

• Summary:

  • The Arran Economic Group (AEG) hopes to be the first community organisation in Scotland to use government funds to build dozens of affordable homes aimed at local workers, which will be given out based on economic rather than social need.

  • The group, made up of local business people and community activists, believes houses on the island are among the least affordable in the UK. Arran’s average annual wage is £24,000, but average house prices are eight to 10 times that, giving it an affordability ratio nearly as bad as in London.

  • The problem has been exacerbated by the number of properties used for tourists or bought by retirees, who take up a significant number of homes on the island, pushing up prices and resulting in shortages of homes to rent.

  • An investigation by the Guardian has found that 23% of the houses on Arran are used for holiday homes or second homes. This is one of the highest rates in the UK, and is thought to be second only to St Ives in Cornwall where a quarter of properties are holiday homes.

• Keywords: Arran, Arran Economic Group, AEG, Scotland, United Kingdom, UK, affordability, property market, tourism, holiday homes, second hoes, St Ives, Cornwall, England

• The private renters trapped in Britain’s new slums

• By Tom Wall. Published in the Guardian on 13 April 2019

• https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/13/trapped-britain-new-slums-poverty-austerity-social-housing

• Summary:

  • The stark human cost of Britain’s decade-long austerity drive, welfare reforms and warped housing priorities can be glimpsed in 11 decaying flats carved from what was once a grand Victorian terrace home in Weston-super-Mare. (...)

  • These are the new slums of Britain – a tenure of unsafe and unaffordable housing with few routes out. The people trapped here would have once have had the chance of moving into relatively spacious, well-equipped council homes at genuinely affordable rents. But, due to the failure of successive governments to build enough social housing, that is an option open only for a vanishingly small minority of people in the most extreme circumstances.

  • Exclusive analysis of official figures by the academic duo at the forefront of research into the private rental sector, Julie Rugg and David Rhodes, shows that 90% of the 1.4 million households renting on low incomes in England are being put at risk by harmful living conditions and/or pushed further into poverty and possible eviction by rents they cannot afford.

  • Nearly 30% are living in non-decent homes, 10% are living in overcrowded properties and 85% are in “after housing cost poverty”, which means their rent pushes them below the poverty line.

• Keywords: slums, England, United Kingdom, UK, housing crisis, affordability, rental market, social housing, Julie Rugg, David Rhodes

• How much does it cost to rent a place in your town? Prices are already higher than in 2008

• Original headline in Catalan: Quant val llogar un pis al teu municipi? Els preus ja superen els nivells del 2008

• By Frances Serra and Montse Enrubia. Published on CCMA on 10 March 2019

• https://www.ccma.cat/324/interactiu-quant-val-llogar-pis-al-teu-municipi/noticia/2908978/

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • Rental prices soar in Catalonia: the average prices are already above the levels reached back in 2008, primarily in Barcelona and its metropolitan area.

  • According to official data, prices rose again in 2018, and in some counties they have been rising for five consecutive years.

  • In Barcelona, rental costs for a flat are, on average, 929 euros per month , almost 6% more than in 2017. The most expensive district is Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, where the price exceeds 1,260 euros; while Nou Barris is the district of Barcelona with the lowest price, 674 euros per month.

  • The most expensive town in Catalonia to rent a flat is Sant Vicenç de Montalt, where the average price is 1,250 euros.

• Keywords: Spain, Barcelona, Catalonia, rent, rental cost, rent, rental housing, price hike

• Collaborative housing, the “anti-speculative, human and sustainable” model that flourishes in Spain

• Original headline in Spanish: Vivienda colaborativa, el modelo “antiespeculativo, humano y sostenible” que florece en España

• By Alicia Avilés. Published in Eldiario.es on 5 April 2019

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • Being a model that starts from cooperatives created by people, that is, horizontal in their methods, the formulas are varied but they all have one point in common: cohousing or collaborative housing is a reality because it seeks to live in a “more humane and sustainable way", and because in many cases it also involves investing in the future of care. (...)

  • Currently, it is growing as an alternative to conventional housing and the model of residences for the elderly and actively aging. This last case is known as 'senior cohousing', but the multiplier effect is taking place intergenerationally and in different age ranges.

• Keywords: cohousing, collaborative housing, aging, senior cohousing, care homes, alternative housing models

• Madrid neighbourhoods: tell me where you live and I'll tell you how much salary you spend on rent

• Original headline in Spanish: Barrios de Madrid: dime dónde vives y te diré cuánto sueldo destinas al alquiler

• By Elena Sanz. Published in El Confidencial on 13 February 2019

• https://www.elconfidencial.com/vivienda/2019-02-13/alquiler-burbuja-ing-precios-rentas-hogares_1820658/

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • The article looks into rent levels across different Madrid neighbourhoods, taking into account the percentage of income one spends on rent in different neighbourhoods.

  • Experts consider that no family should spend more than 30-35% of their income to pay for housing, whether it is rent or purchase. If one spends more than 30-35% of their income on rent, it means that in the face of possible economic adversities - such as the loss of employment - one could be in serious trouble to pay their mortgage or rent.

  • However, in cities such as Madrid or Barcelona, these percentages are exceeded in most of the neighbourhoods. Although investment funds with apartments for rent do subject their future tenants to a risk control, to avoid that they spend more than 30% of their income on rent, this is not the case with the vast majority of contracts that they are signed daily in Spain.

  • Madrid's El Plantío neighbourhood registers the highest per capita income in the city (84,779.46 euros), but also one of the highest rents, on average 3,732 euros per month, which eats up almost 53% of the income of those households. In Barcelona's Torre Baró neighbourhood with the lowest per capita income in the city (22,254 euros) and an average rent of 1,300 euros per month, the percentage gets up to 70%.

• Keywords: Spain, Madrid, house prices, rent prices, rents, mortgages, neighbourhood

• Young Spaniards can no longer buy or rent housing

• Original headline in Spanish: Los jóvenes españoles ya no pueden ni comprar ni alquilar vivienda

• By Sandra López. Published in El País on 24 November 2018

• https://elpais.com/economia/2018/11/22/actualidad/1542902550_758805.html

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • Young Spaniards are losing the battle for housing. Leaving the parental home with a single source of income is unlikely below 30 years. Only 19.3% had achieved it at the end of 2017 (in 2008 they were 26%), according to the latest data from the Emancipation Observatory of the Youth Council of Spain (CJE). Eurostat confirms this: the average age at which the family home is abandoned (29.3 years) is the sixth highest in Europe.

  • This is so because the percentage of income that those under 30 years must allocate to access a home exceeds the recommended 30%. In the case of solo employees it is bleeding: the rent eats 88.8% of their income and the purchase 61%.

• Keywords: emancipation, leaving the parental home, rental markets, property markets, overburden, young people, Spain

• Germany's rental market is broken

• Original headline in German: Deutschlands Mietmarkt ist kaputt

• By Hannah Beitzer, Sabrina Ebitsch, Christian Endt, Thomas Öchsner, Martina Schories and Moritz Zajonz. Published in Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) on 21 December 2018

• https://projekte.sueddeutsche.de/artikel/wirtschaft/miete-wohnen-in-der-krise-e687627/

• Summary from Google Translate:

  • The housing market has gotten out of joint, not only in Hamburg or Munich. Real estate prices and rents have risen at an insane pace in many German cities in recent years and have made living the crucial social issue of our time.

  • This is one of the reasons why 57,000 people took part in the SZ project #MeineMiete and filled out a comprehensive questionnaire. Although the results now available are not representative, they nevertheless show how broken the rental market in Germany is - and not just in numbers, but also in fate. In addition to the standardized answers in the survey, almost 3,000 people sent us their stories. Taken together, these stories paint a depressing picture of the German housing market.

• Keywords: Germany, rental markets, affordability, crowdsourcing

• The International Journal of Housing Policy (http://ijhp.online) started producing a podcast series in January 2019.

• New episodes come out every few months and feature interviews with leading scholars in the field of housing.

• https://soundcloud.com/user-218772773

• Trapped by my mortgage

• By Cat McShane. Published by the BBC One Panorama on 27 October 2018

• Video available: https://vimeo.com/298729644

• Summary:

  • More than 100,000 people in Britain are "mortgage prisoners" trapped on high-interest rates. They are forced to pay double the interest they would on a competitive mortgage.

  • These "mortgage prisoners" could not re-mortgage to a cheaper deal with their existing lender, when initial fixed-rate interest rate deals expired, but they had to move on to the high standard variable rate where they paid interest rates of between 6% and 9% (compared to loans of less than 3% had they been able to re-mortgage."

  • Since 2018, Rachel Neale, one of the people with whom Cat McShane filmed, has gone on to be the figurehead of the Mortgage Prisoners UK campaign group, which lobbies relentlessly and creates really engaging campaigns that get picked-up.

  • As of 2019 and 2020, the group has got pretty strong cross-party support in Parliament and a group legal action is underway.

• Keywords: UK, mortgage, rent, debt, financialisation, financialization, lobby, high rates, remortgage

• 'Urban renewal: The crazy business that is producing millions'

• By Vania Maia and Paulo M. Santos. Published in Exame, in Sapo, on 25 February 2018

• Original headline in Portuguese: Reabilitação urbana: O negócio louco que está a dar milhões

• https://visao.sapo.pt/exame/2018-02-25-Reabilitacao-urbana-O-negocio-louco-que-esta-a-dar-milhoes/

• Summary (from Google Translate):

  • In 2017, the real estate investment achieved through gold visas in the Portugal was €771 million. About €743 million corresponds to the purchase of properties with a value equal to or greater than € 500,000, and close to €27 million to the purchase of properties for rehabilitation with a value equal to or greater than €350,000, according to the Foreigners and Borders Service.

  • The Chinese continue to be the ones that most seek this type of investment. International investors were responsible for buying 25% of the homes sold last year. In the case of the BWA Group, the customer portfolio is divided in half between foreigners and Portuguese.

  • Many want to monetize the real estate they already have, but do not know how. “They are people or institutions that don't understand anything about construction, but they have a lot of money”, explains Carolina Janeiro, 35, director of the company's project management department, created two years ago, when they realized this market need.

  • Between 2013 and 2018, property prices increased by 56% in the historic centre of Lisbon and by 88% in downtown Porto.

• Regulatory levels: local (Lisbon, Porto), national (Portugal), EU

• Keywords: Lisbon, Porto, Portugal, renovation, investment, foreign investment, corporate landlords

• The European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) brings together many academic researchers working on almost every conceivable dimension of housing and spread all over Europe.

• It's organised through thematic working groups that may offer a first point of contact for other people researching housing issues: https://www.enhr.net/pageperworking.php

• As of August 2020, the working groups include

  • Collaborative Housing

  • Comparative Housing Policy

  • Disadvantaged Urban Neighbourhoods and Communities

  • East European Housing & Urban Policy

  • Energy Efficiency and Environmental Sustainability of Housing

  • Home Ownership and Globalisation

  • Housing, Migration and Family Dynamics

  • Housing and Living Conditions of Ageing Populations

  • Housing Economics

  • Housing Finance

  • Housing in Developing Countries

  • Housing Law

  • Land Markets and Housing Policy

  • Metropolitan Dynamics: Urban Change, Markets and Governance

  • Minority Ethnic Groups and Housing

  • Policy and Research

  • Private Rented Markets

  • Residential Buildings and Architectural Design

  • Residential Context of Health

  • Residential Environments and People

  • Social Housing and Globalisation

  • Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance

  • Southern European Housing

  • Towards Sustainable Communities and housing: actors, interventions and solutions

  • Welfare Policy, Homelessness, and Social Exclusion (WELPHASE)

  • Working Groups in Preparation

    • Housing and New Technologies

    • Housing and Refugees

• Is a refugee crisis a housing crisis? Only if housing supply is unresponsive

• By Sandra V. Rozoa and Micaela Sviatschib. Published online on 25 September 2020 in the Journal of Development Economics

• https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102563

• Abstract:

  • What are the impacts of large inflows of refugees on refugee-hosting housing markets? We examine the effects of the arrival of 1.3 million Syrian refugees on the housing expenditures and income of Jordanian nationals. For this purpose, we exploit that refugees disproportionately locate around the three largest refugee camps after the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Larger refugee inflows are reflected in two main trends: higher housing expenditures of all Jordanians and increments in rental income of individuals that own real estate property. The effects are explained by the large spike in rental prices that resulted from the higher demand for housing units and the unresponsive housing supply in refugee-hosting areas.

• Keywords: Jordan, Syria, refugees, asylum, camps, rental prices, supply, demand

• Discrimination in the rental housing market: a field experiment in Ireland

• By Egle Gusciute. Published online on 4 September 2020 in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

• https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1813017

• Abstract:

  • This paper presents the results of a first field experiment on ethnic discrimination in the rental housing market in Ireland, and considers ethnic discrimination against European and non-European migrants.

  • The experimental involved creating six fictitious applicants with different ethnic and gender names that applied for vacant rental apartments advertised online.

  • Results of the experiment show that Irish applicants are more likely to be invited to view an apartment than both Polish and Nigerian applicants. But Polish applicants are more likely to be invited to view an apartment than Nigerian applicants.

  • There is also discrimination based on gender - females have received more invitations to view apartments than male applicants.

• Keywords: Ireland, housing market, discrimination, rental housing market, rental market, migrants, anti-migrant discrimination.

• Landlord tax evasion costing up to £1.7bn a year

• By TaxWatch, published in August 2020

• https://www.taxwatchuk.org/landlord_tax_evasion

• Abstract:

  • Tax evasion by residential landlords could be costing the British Treasury up to £1.73 billion a year, which is more than three times the amount reported for 2010, the only time official data has been published on the scale of tax evasion in the whole of the buy to let sector.

  • In 2013 the Government estimated that up to 1.5 million landlords had underpaid or failed to pay up to half a billion pounds in tax for the 2009-2010 financial year.

  • HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) does not make a separate estimate of the proportion of the total tax gap attributable to residential landlords, but does estimate the tax gap arising from individuals in employment who have not declared and therefore not paid tax on lettings income. "The latest estimate of this tax gap was £540 million for the tax year 2018-19.”

  • However, according to the report, "tax evasion amongst self-employed landlords is rife. According to research conducted by Arun Advani of the University of Warwick, one quarter of landlords that file self-assessment returns do not declare all their income, on average not reporting 60% of their property income." That this means is that the £540m in unpaid tax is attributable to approximately only a third of the tenancies at most. "If the tax behaviour of the two thirds not ‘in employment’ is similar to those who are, and we have no reason to believe otherwise, the total tax gap is then likely to be as much as £1.73bn," states the report.

• Keywords: UK, landlords, residential landlords, tax evasion, tax gap

• Housing affordability sets us apart: The effect of rising housing prices on relocation behaviour

• By Tim Winke, published in Urban Studies Journal, on 5 August 2020.

• https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098020943482 (paid access)

• Abstract:

  • This study examines the effect of increasing local housing prices on the relocation behaviour of low- and medium-income households.

  • A unique data set is used that links online housing offers to the largest representative household panel in Germany.

  • Low-income households are more likely to remain in their current housing and sustain higher levels of housing cost burden. The explanation for their unwillingness to move is the inability to find an affordable apartment and the fear of being pushed out of inner cities. If they move, they relocate further out of the city centre and to neighbourhoods with high unemployment rates. Middle-income households remain in economically better-off neighbourhoods.

  • Rising housing markets facilitate socio-spatial segregation.

  • Rising housing prices have an impact on the population at different levels. Where people can afford to live can have lasting effects on their life chances. On the municipal level, disadvantaged neighbourhoods can suffer from high levels of crime and concentrated school problems. On the regional level, economic inequalities across regions might foster social and political polarisation.

• Keywords: geography of disadvantage, housing affordability, affordable housing, residential housing, housing, residential mobility, segregation, selective mobility, Germany.

• Similar Origins – Divergent Paths: The Politics of German and Dutch Housing Markets

• By Alice Cooper and Paulette Kurzer. Published on May 20, 2020,

• PDF available (not open access): https://doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2020.1764541

• Abstract:

  • This article is a comparative study of Dutch and German housing markets that shared many commonalities until the early 1990s.

  • Since the 1990s, the two markets have diverged significantly; with homeownership, mortgage debt and housing prices much higher in the Netherlands than Germany, which is partially due to more extensive turn to neoliberalism in housing policy in the Netherlands.

  • The article also looks into differences in the treatment of private renting versus not-for-profit social housing by governments in each country, and draw attention to mortgage liberalisation after 1993 in the Netherlands, which did not happen in Germany.

• Keywords: Germany, the Netherlands, Dutch, German, housing market, housing policies, mortgage liberalisation

• Sharing-Based Co-Housing Categorization: A Structural Overview of the Terms and Characteristics Used in Urban Co-Housing

• By Annamaria Babos, Melinda Benko, Annamaria Orban, Julianna Szabo, in Építés – Építészettudomány journal (published in August 2020)

• Link to the article: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343892946_Sharing-Based_Co-Housing_Categorization_A_Structural_Overview_of_the_Terms_and_Characteristics_Used_in_Urban_Co-Housing

• Abstract:

  • The European urban areas are growing fast, with many contemporary housing forms, among which is also different co-housing forms.

  • These housing forms are analysed in a number of publications, without a common terminology of this interdisciplinary research field. This study, based on the overview of existing definitions and characteristics, introduces a comprehensive sharing based categorization that could be valuable for these projects. The researchers believe that the social dimension of sharing methods would not exist without the physical ones, because in co-housing the shared space is the basic criteria. "The physical-architectural sharing methods and social aspects (fields of sharing like creation, tenure, and activities) are strongly interrelated and are interdependent."

  • During the analysis, it became clear for researchers that different fields and levels of sharing appear in the used sub-terms that connect them.

  • Collaborative housing definition: “Collaborative housing is a variety of projects that establish high levels of long-term participative relationships, not only amongst their residents but also between these and a wide range of external stakeholders."

  • Collective living/Co-living definition: “Collective living is a residential structure that accommodates three or more biologically unrelated people” usually in one apartment.

  • Collective self-build housing: “Housing arranged by groups for their own use; individuals typically commission the construction of a new house from a builder, contractor or package company or, in a modest number of cases, physically build a house for themselves.

  • Collective self-help housing definition: “Bringing empty or derelict properties back into use through renovation by community projects, often involving property acquired by the local authority from the private sector.”

  • Communal housing definition: “Communal housing means housing for nonfamily groups with a common kitchen and dining facilities but without medical, psychiatric or other care.”

  • Commune definition: “Commune is a group of families or individuals living together and sharing possessions and responsibilities.”

  • Community-led housing definition: “Community-led housing is a housing project that are focused mostly on affordable homes for the benefit of the local community, either individually or in co-operation with a builder or other local housing provider… The community group will take a long-term formal role in the ownership, stewardship or management of the homes."

  • Condominium definition: “Condominium means, where the owner owns his or her unit in fee simple absolute and shares and undivided interest in the common elements (for example, sidewalks, hallways, pools, clubhouse, storage place) as a tenant in condominium owner.”

  • Cooperative housing definition: “Cooperative Housing is an association of people (co-operators), which cooperatively owns and manages apartments and common areas. Individual members own shares in the cooperative and pay rent which entitles them to occupy an apartment as if they were owners and to have equal access to the common areas.”

  • Eco-district definition: “Eco-district is an urban development aiming to integrate the objectives of sustainable development and focusing on energy, the environment, and social life.”

  • Eco-villages definition: “An ecovillage is an intentional, traditional or urban community that is consciously designed through locally owned participatory processes in all four dimensions of sustainability (social, culture, ecology, and economy) to regenerate social and natural environments."

  • Gated communities: “Gated communities are walled or fenced housing developments, to which public access is restricted, characterized by legal agreements which tie the residents to a common code of conduct and (usually) collective responsibility for management.”

  • Intentional community definition: “A planned residential community, designed to have a high degree of social cohesion and teamwork; members typically hold a common social, political, religious, or spiritual vision.”

  • The team regrouped various types of co-housing based on the social dimension (shared activities, shared creation, and shared tenure), suggesting that in the future research one uses the classification that "measurably classifies the sharing methods that appear in each project."

• Keywords: co-housing, cohousing, urban housing, collective housing, housing classification, housing categorization, participation, field of sharing, social sharing

• Frustrating Beginnings: How Social Ties Compensate Housing Integration Barriers for Afghan Refugees in Vienna

• By Josef Kohlbacher. Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria.

• PDF available: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/2872/2872

• Abstract:

  • A plethora of empirical studies document the relevance of social networks for providing information about labour market opportunities - but there is less research about the relevance of social networks when it comes to housing market opportunities.

  • The article presents findings from a qualitative survey (conducted in 2017-2018) on the integration of Afghan refugees in Vienna, the largest city in Austria with a diversified labour and housing market and a multi-faceted (migrant) economy.

  • The analysis focuses on Ager and Strang’s (2008) argument, which characterizes housing as a core domain in integration. Housing constitutes a potential means of supporting integration into domains other than the labour market.

  • Researchers (Aigner, 2018; Borevi & Bengtsson, 2015) have also emphasized the relevance of refugees’ social ties with family and co-ethnic groups, whereas the importance of inter-ethnic networking with members of the receiving society remains insufficiently explored.

  • The majority of the 65 interviewees that participated in the survey emphasized the importance of refugees’ social ties for their efforts towards structural integration.

  • The article highlights a number of problems that Afghan refugees face when looking for a home: the availability of suitable housing on the market, little knowledge of the local rental market, discrimination (by lessors and real-estate agents, xenophobia (‘Afghanophobia), living spaces that don't suit Afghans' household structures that consist predominantly of single males or large households etc.

  • Almost all interviewees reported that gathering information about vacant apartments or rooms communicated through social networks is the most successful routes towards obtaining lodgings. Networks rather than internet real estate search platforms were the greatest help.

• Keywords: Austria, refugees, Afghan refugees, Vienna, housing integration, access to housing

• In which European countries is homeownership more financially advantageous? Explaining the size of the tenure wealth gap in 10 countries with different housing and welfare regimes

• By Barend Wind and Caroline Dewilde. Published online in the International Journal of Housing Policy on 30 August 2019

• https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2019.1608113

• Abstract:

  • Previous research consistently shows that homeowners accumulate more wealth compared with tenants.

  • In this paper, we describe the size of this ‘tenure wealth gap’ for 10 European countries [Austria, Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain]. Furthermore, we explain why the size of the tenure wealth gap differs between countries by including cross-level interactions between institutional variables and housing tenure in a series of country-fixed effects regression models.

  • Cross-country differences arise as the costs of owning versus renting, as well as the profitability of homeownership versus other investments, differ along the lines of welfare policies and housing regime arrangements.

  • We attempt to control for selection bias related to tenure status by using propensity score matching techniques, using data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS).

  • Our findings suggest that the tenure wealth gap is largest in familialistic welfare states, in which marginalised tenants are unable to save, whereas homeownership is a family resource that provides an in-kind retirement income (‘passive’ asset-based welfare).

  • We find smaller tenure wealth gaps in countries with a financialised promotion of homeownership, where housing wealth functions as a privatised welfare arrangement (‘active’ asset-based welfare).

  • The smallest tenure wealth gaps occur in countries with more affordable rental housing, allowing tenants to accumulate savings.

• Keywords: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, home-ownership, tenure, wealth gap, rental housing, property, welfare

• Invisible energy poverty? Analysing housing costs in Central and Eastern Europe

• By Lilia Karpinska and Sławomir Śmiech. Published online on 5 August 2020 in Energy Research and Social science (full version of the article not available for free)

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629620302450?via%3Dihub

• Abstract:

  • The paper offers a comprehensive approach to capturing the scale of exposure to hidden energy poverty at a household level in 11 Central and Eastern European countries.

  • "Scarce data and the lack of agreement on the energy poverty definition among the EU countries impedes operationalization of energy poverty measures on a global scale," notes the paper.

  • The paper tracks hidden energy poverty based on the existing micro-level data compiled by Eurostat, and assumes that the energy poor limit their energy consumption to the level below what is reasonably assumed a decent life.

  • The results confirm that on average 23.57% of the Central and Eastern European population is exposed to hidden energy poverty. The affected are mostly single-person households or living in detached houses and remote areas households with dependent children.

• Keywords: hidden energy poverty, energy poverty, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, energy,

• Private Housing in Portugal in an Intergenerational Perspective (since 1970)

• Original title in Portuguese: Habitação Própria em Portugal numa Perspetiva Intergeracional

• By Romana Xerez, Elvira Pereira e Francielli Dalprá Cardoso. Published by the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

• Available as a PDF file in Portuguse on https://content.gulbenkian.pt/wp-content/uploads/sites/46/2020/07/22160512/Habitacao_relatorio_2Edicao_v3.pdf

• Summary (translated from Portugese by DeepL):

  • This work studies the expansion of private housing in Portugal, between different generations, after 1970. It analyzes this trajectory based on data from the Censuses, micro-data from the Survey of Living Conditions and Income (ICOR) of 2011 and 2017 and scientific evidence. It provides elements for an analysis of this evolution in the different age groups, presents some regional analysis and discusses the emergence of risks. These new so-social risks (Pierson 2001; Taylor-Gooby 2004; Bonoli 2005, 2007) are associated with overburdened housing, overcrowding and deprivation of housing conditions, and the evolution of factors conditioning access to housing. These risks affect several age groups, and are more associated with tenants, with income at market prices, but also with income at reduced prices, and with owners with and without charges. Several social and economic factors have increased the social risks of families. The conclusions of this study suggest access to housing as an important issue of intergenerational justice and social policy intervention.

• Keywords: Portugal, overburden, overcrowding, living conditions, rental market, property market, social housing

• Does Juan Carlos or Nelson Obtain a Larger Price Cut in the Spanish Housing Market?

• By Josep Maria Raya, Catia Nicodemo and Daniel McMillen. Published online on the Urban Affairs Review on 18 November 2018

• https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1078087418811081 (as of May 2020, it only has paid access)

• Abstract:

  • Using a unique dataset and a nonparametric decomposition, we determine whether immigrants with native names, immigrants with foreign names, and natives have different outcomes in Spain’s housing market.

  • Results suggest that immigrants with native names achieve greater discounts relative to immigrants with non-Spanish names. As a robustness check, we prove that this is not due to the country of birth.

  • We observe that most of the difference in price across immigrant groups remains unexplained, which may imply some form of discrimination (pure or statistical) against immigrants with non-native names.

• Keywords: Spain, discrimination, migration

• City strategies for affordable housing: the approaches of Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Gothenburg

• By Anna Granath Hansson. Published online in the International Journal of Housing Policy on 6 February 2017

• https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2017.1278581

• Abstract:

  • Affordable housing has emerged as a key concept in housing policy in a wide range of countries.

  • Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Gothenburg are all experiencing population growth and changing demographics; housing construction has lagged demand, leading to housing shortage and to increased housing costs.

  • This article provides a detailed case study on institutional prerequisites and political strategies to increase affordable housing supply.

  • The four cities focus on traditional housing policy tools: organisation, urban planning, land allocation, and subsidies.

  • Affordable housing is promoted through targeted tools as well as policies aiming at increased housing supply elasticity.

  • The German cities have come further than their Swedish peers in creating an active housing policy as they have clearer goals supported by influential politicians, and use more tools.

  • A tentative explanation of the difference between the German and Swedish cities explored in this paper is that politicians in Berlin and Hamburg have greater incentives to promote housing construction because of the structure of their cities’ housing markets.

• Keywords: affordable housing, housing policy, urban planning, land allocation, subsidies, Berlin, Hamburg, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Germany, Sweden

• Rent regulation: the balance between private landlords and tenants in six European countries

• By Marietta Haffner, Marja Elsinga and Joris Hoekstra. Published online in the European Journal of Housing Policy on 29 May 2008

• https://doi.org/10.1080/14616710802037466

• Abstract:

  • The private rental sector has been declining in many European countries.

  • In describing the decline of the private rental sector, it is often suggested that a causal relationship exists between the decrease in private renting and rent control.

  • The assumption is that the stricter the form of rent control, the greater the decrease in private renting levels. Or, conversely, that with fewer rent controls there are more opportunities for the private rental sector.

  • At the same time, however, an unregulated rental market may result in insecurity for tenants.

  • This text focuses on conflicts of interest between private landlords and tenants in the regulation of rents, from a welfare economics viewpoint.

  • We present the results of a comparative study that involves France, England, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. We describe the system of rent regulation in each country.

  • We conclude that the balance achieved between landlords and tenants as a result of rent regulation may not be as clear-cut as it is often presented to be.

• Keywords: rent regulation, landlords, tenants, France, England, Germany, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands

• Scapegoating rent control: masking the cause of homelessness

• By Richard P. Appelbaum, Michael Dolny, Peter Dreier and John I. Gilderbloom. Published online in the Journal of the American Planning Association on 12 April 2007

• https://doi.org/10.1080/01944369108975484

• Abstract:

  • While many analysts contend that a shortage of affordable housing is a principal cause of homelessness, one recent well-publicized study argues that housing shortages themselves —and hence homelessness— are ultimately the result of ill-conceived local rent controls.

  • This study, conducted by William Tucker, has been widely cited by opponents of rent control as a justification for limiting the ability of localities to regulate rents.

  • The research presented in this article is a re-analysis of Tucker's data that corrects for methodological shortcomings in the original analysis.

  • The research shows that there is no evidence to support Tucker's conclusion that rent control causes homelessness.

• Keywords: rent control, homelessness, US

• The removal of rent control and its impact on search and mismatching costs: evidence from Oslo

• By Are Oust. Published online on the International Journal of Housing Policy on 20 July 2017

• https://doi.org/10.1080/19491247.2017.1336876

• Abstract:

  • The removal of the Norwegian rent control in 1982 created a natural experiment that enabled us to investigate whether rent control affected the search and matching process in the private residential rental market in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

  • We collected and analysed data on ‘housing for rent’, ‘housing wanted’ and ‘housing exchange-wanted’ advertisements in Oslo covering a period from 1970 to 2008.

  • We concluded that the use of newspaper listing services by potential tenants and landlords changed after the rent control removal.

  • Our results indicate that it is more costly, in time and money, for a potential tenant to search for and to find a home under rent control.

  • Moreover, our results indicate that rent control increases the probability of and the distance from the ideal dwelling, in size, standard and location, a potential tenant have to settle for.

• Keywords: rent control, tenants, Oslo, Norway

• The impact of rent control on housing maintenance: a dynamic analysis incorporating European and North American rent regulations

• By Nandinee K. Kutty. Published online in Housing Studies on 12 April 2007

• https://doi.org/10.1080/02673039608720846

• Abstract:

  • This paper examines the widely accepted view that rent control leads to lower reinvestment in housing and, hence, lower housing quality.

  • This view is based on fairly simple housing models and a very simple form of rent control that rarely occurs in practice.

  • We consider the impact of rent control on housing maintenance within the framework of a dynamic model of housing reinvestment developed in Kutty (1995) that incorporates adjustment costs, durability of housing, uncertainty, and the role of future expectations.

  • This paper develops a range of cases of rent control, incorporating particular features of actual rent control regulations prevalent in Europe and North America.

  • We find that the impact of rent control on housing maintenance, within the theoretical framework of our dynamic model, is ambiguous.

  • In most cases that we consider, though not in all, the level of reinvestment under rent control is lower than the level of reinvestment in the absence of rent control.

  • Adjustment costs and future expectations play an important part in the response of landlords to rent control and, together with features of actual rent control ordinances, contribute to the theoretical ambiguity of the impacts of rent control on housing maintenance.

  • We find that the discouraging effect of simple rent control on housing maintenance can be mitigated by provisions in rent control ordinances that reward quality improvements, and/or include the enforcement of housing quality codes.

  • An important result in this paper is that when rent control ordinances allow increases in the level of housing services to be valued at their market price, the level of reinvestment under rent control is the same as the level of reinvestment in the absence of rent control.

• Keywords: rent control, housing maintenance, landlords, tenants, Europe, North America

• In its own words, the Housing Evolutions Hub "highlights the latest innovations in the field of social, public, affordable and responsible housing. Additionally, it provides a European-wide platform for communities of experts and practitioners to share and learn from innovation challenges that are crucial to enhance and promote their housing objectives".

• It includes a map of innovative housing projects from all around Europe that can be a source of inspiration for further research and stories about housing: https://www.housingevolutions.eu/project/

  • A few randomly selected such projects are:

    • Former military barracks turned into a circular economy project in Fehring, Austria.

    • Mobilising vacant building: empty offices become social housing for students in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

    • Childcare in cooperative housing communities in Dublin, Ireland

    • Energy-efficient housing for senior citizens in Barcelona, Spain

• The Housing Evolutions Hub is managed by Housing Europe, the European Federation of Public, Cooperative and Social Housing, http://www.housingeurope.eu/

• Housing 2030 (stylised as the hashtag #Housing2030) is an initiative led by UNECE, UN Habitat and Housing Europe that aims at making "clear what affordable housing entails:

  • strategic land policy,

  • purposeful investment

  • and good governance".

• Housing 2030 "defines key concepts and policy tools drawn from the experience of over 50 countries. The report zeroes in on four key areas:

  • land policy and planning strategies,

  • funding and financing instruments,

  • and good governance and regulation

  • as well as environmental and energy standards for a more sustainable future.

• Clear illustrations show how these policies have been implemented, pointing out what makes them best practice and providing useful links to a wealth of contacts and resources."

• https://www.housing2030.org/about

• Housing 2030 offers several potentially relevant resources for journalists and researchers working on housing:

  • Names of some of the top world researchers on housing: https://www.housing2030.org/researchers

  • Reads, podcasts and videos about housing: https://www.housing2030.org/library

  • And it aims at compiling a list of best housing practices that could serve as inspiration for research and stories: https://www.housing2030.org/get-involved

• Keywords: UN, land policy, investment, policy making, research, best practices

• Land policy for affordable and inclusive housing: an international review

• By Julie Lawson and Hannu Ruonavaara

• Published as part of the SmartLand academic consortium in May 2020

• https://smartland.fi/wp-content/uploads/Land-policy-for-affordable-and-inclusive-housing-an-international-review.pdf (2.6MB)

• Summary:

  • "The purpose of this international review is to shed light on the range of land policy instruments that governments can use to inform best practices that improve housing affordability and promote more inclusive neighbourhoods.

  • "These instruments include: public land banking, public land leasing, land re-adjustment, land value recapture, regulatory planning, neighbourhood planning and regulating the platform real estate industry.

  • "The geographical scope of the illustrations presented is both broad and deep and includes Europe, Asia, North America and Australia to provide national, regional and local territorial perspective. (...)

  • "Cheap global credit has accelerated the process of financialization in the 21st century. In the absence of effective financial regulation and land policy and more flexible working conditions, this has generated worsening affordability, insecurity of incomes and occupancy rights, threatening secure access to affordable housing.

  • "To combat these challenges, it is important that the supply and preservation of affordable and social housing be improved. This will require a more proactive approach to land policy coupled with a more effective investment by citizens, social enterprises, businesses and most importantly their national and local governments in the immediate future. This report provides many illustrations of how."

• Keywords: land policy, affordability, financialisation of housing, financialization of housing, REITs, Vienna, Austria, Netherlands, Australia, Singapore, China, Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden, Germany, Seoul, South Korea, England, Scotland, UK, US, United States, Paris, France

• On 6 August 2020, the English authorities opened a public consultation about urban planning, in part aiming at tackling the housing crisis: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/planning-for-the-future

• Some critics pointed that the government was over-relying too much on urban planning at the expense of ignoring other key factors affecting the housing crisis:

There has been some concern expressed about these proposals. The government makes comparisons with lower house prices in other countries to suggest that the planning system in England is at fault. Planning does impact housing supply and house prices – but so do a range of other factors.

The proposals have little to say about issues related to our land market and patterns of land ownership. It does not consider that in other countries, more proactive local state action in land assembly (buying sites and preparing them for development) helps the process of building.

It overlooks the potential of local authorities rather than private developers to deliver new housing. It ignores the way the private sector manages the rate of building out new housing even when it has planning permission, in order to maintain profitability. More fundamentally, it ignores the way flows of investment income impact housing demand and so affordability.

Further, it does not tackle the thorny issue of green belt reform. The large swathe of land protected from development around London will continue under these reforms, meaning that housing pressures in the south-east will be harder to tackle.

In other words, the reforms suggest the planning system is to blame for the housing crisis without acknowledging the multi-faceted nature of that crisis. Without tackling various other factors, it will fail to resolve the issues it seeks to address.

Source: England planning proposals aim to tackle housing crisis – but overlook key issues. By Ben Clifford. Published in The Conversation on 11 August 2020, https://theconversation.com/england-planning-proposals-aim-to-tackle-housing-crisis-but-overlook-key-issues-144099

• On 23 February 2020, the so-called Berlin Rent Cap regulation came into effect:

  • "The policy freezes rents on about 1.4 million homes for the next five years, at the rate that they were rented for on June 18, 2019 — the day that state Senate decided on the first key points of the measure." (Source: Deutsche Welle)

  • "It represents a law of the federal state of Berlin creating rent limitations based on its federal authority for housing. It prohibits exceeding of these caps and includes fines for breach of this law. The law is effective for a period of five years.

  • "The rent freeze law does not apply to publicly funded residential accommodations (social housing) and not to flats repaired or modernized with public funds and which are subject to rent control.

  • "In addition, the law does not apply to new buildings which became ready for occupancy for the first time on or after 1 January 2014 and not to former living space permanently uninhabitable or vacant which was restored for residential purposes with expenses corresponding to newly built space.!

  • Source and more information: Berliner Mieterverein (Berlin Tenants' Association)

• A few days after the Berlin Rent Cap came into effect, Deutsche Bank, one of the biggest European banks, published an analysis aimed at investors of how the Rent Camp might affect the Berlin housing market: "Rent cap may decouple real estate cycle from economic supercycle for a number of years" (PDF, 650KB)

• The key points of the report are:

  • The key message: if the rent cap is constitutional, the situation for investors will change dramatically. (...) Risk-averse, short-term oriented investors have incentives to leave the Berlin market. We believe Berlin remains an attractive market for long-term oriented investors.

  • Previous regulatory approaches including rent brakes, revisions to the rent index, and a housing summit were footnotes in the German real estate boom.

  • The city senate’s main concern is freezing rents across the entire private residential market for five years.

  • This also legally prohibits rent increases until 2021. After that point, rent increases of 1.3% per year will be permitted.

  • The economic supercycle in Berlin marches on undiminished.

  • The negative effects of the rent cap on the housing market are likely to emerge clearly in the long run. We therefore do not expect the scheme to be extended beyond 2030 and believe that Berlin remains an attractive location for long-term oriented investors on account of the economic supercycle.

• The right to affordable housing: Europe’s neglected duty

• By Dunja Mijatović, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe (COE). Published on the COE site on 23 January 2020

• https://www.coe.int/en/web/commissioner/-/the-right-to-affordable-housing-europe-s-neglected-duty

• Long summary:

  • "Housing is in short supply in Europe today, in spite of increasing demand. In many countries, the overall level of housing construction is lower now than in previous decades, contributing to structural shortages which are especially acute in large cities. This scarcity of housing is pushing up rents as well as prices, which in most European countries surpass the increase in wages. These trends cause many people to gradually be “priced out” of certain neighbourhoods and force them to accept homes of substandard quality or to move to areas where they face poorer prospects of finding work within a reasonable distance, decent education, quality healthcare, and other basic social needs. (...)

  • According to the European Committee of Social Rights, housing is affordable if the household can afford to pay initial costs, rent and other related costs, like utility bills and charges, on a long-term basis, while still being able to maintain a minimum standard of living. (...)

  • Between 2007 and 2017, the average housing cost overburden rate among poor households increased in the majority of European Union countries. The highest figures in 2017 stood at 90% in Greece, 75% in Denmark and 50% in Bulgaria. Among the EU’s youngest citizens living below the poverty line in 2017, 42% on average were overburdened by the cost of housing; this ratio reached 63% in the Netherlands, 84% in Denmark and 91% in Greece. (...)

  • The availability and quality of housing is a closely related problem. In Armenia, according to UNECE, the 2011 census reported 16,000 people (2% of all households) to live in structures unfit for housing, like metal shipping containers. Also according to UNECE, in Ukraine in 2011 more than one million households were in need of housing while the average waiting time for social housing was estimated to exceed 100 years, and 20 years in Russia. Eighty thousand households have been reported to lack long-term housing solutions in North Macedonia. (...)

  • As a result of the shortage of affordable housing, the social housing sector in Europe is coming under pressure. While there is no single formula for getting social housing policies right, state responses to rising demand have so far been to withdraw and to shift the burden to the local government, private sector, housing associations and non-profit organisations. (...)

  • As observed by my predecessor in the 2013 Issue Paper on safeguarding human rights in times of economic crisis, the 2008 crisis and growing unemployment led to a sharp increase in evictions and rising homelessness in many European countries. While tenant protection laws often serve as a safety net, overall they do not seem to effectively tackle the problem. (...)

  • State responses to rising homelessness have often been characterised by a short-sighted, punitive approach, in a misguided attempt to move the problem out of public sight. My predecessor’s visit to Hungary in 2014 shed light on the national and local government bans on “sleeping rough” on pain of fines, which were imposed on more than a thousand people, and in some cases led to the imprisonment of those unable to pay. Similar bans were observed during his 2015 visit to Norway. More recently, in the UK, press reports found that as overall numbers of rough sleepers continued to rise, in some localities homeless people were banned from town centres and fined.

  • European institutions have intervened in some cases related to forced evictions. The European Court of Human Rights has notably balanced interests of landlords against the need to secure accommodation for the less well-off, and on some occasions has acted as a last resort for families threatened with imminent eviction. The European Committee of Social Rights has in several decisions identified the safeguards that must apply when evictions do take place: respecting the dignity of persons; no evictions at night or during the winter; taking measures to re-house or financially assist the persons concerned. The case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, for its part, has empowered domestic judges to suspend or annul evictions if the rights of occupants have not been respected, for instance in the context of abusive mortgages. While these interventions offer helpful guarantees, states should prevent such emergencies affecting families and children, among others, from occurring in the first place.

• Keywords: human rights, rule of law, affordability

• The CEE Investment Forum is a conference focusing on investments in Central and Eastern Europe. It features international guests, key firms operating in the financial markets across the region, and an extension of the topics.

• For researchers and journalists, it might be interested to look into investments happening or announced in the field of housing and real estate.

• The 2019 edition took place in Prague on 6 November.

• https://www.ceeinvest.eu/

• Key messages:

  • The CEE region is very attractive from the point of view of foreign investment, and this is cross-sectoral.

  • Although the boom in real estate investment in Europe continues, many real estate experts predict a decline in profitability and investors are focusing on high-quality assets in the most economically efficient markets. One of the key themes of the conference was also investment strategies used in the real-estate market and the "fight" for the highest quality assets (foreign vs. local investors).

  • You will also find a list of experts present at the conference, which might be useful to understand "who is who" among the investors interested in the region.

• Keywords: Central Europe, Eastern Europe, CEN, investment, CEN Investment Forum, investment, real-estate, financial markets

• Chapter "Affordable Housing" in The Future of Cities: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward

• Published by the European Commission in April 2019

• https://urban.jrc.ec.europa.eu/thefutureofcities/affordable-housing#the-chapter

• Key messages:

  • Some of Europe’s most in-demand cities have seen sharp increases in housing prices over the past years. This threatens housing affordability as prices are recovering faster than earnings, and the availability of housing is low.

  • Short-term rental platforms, which are becoming increasingly popular, may cause property prices to spiral and negatively affect local liveability.

  • The recent scale-up of foreign and corporate investments in residential urban property has transformed patterns of ownership, raising concerns on the social fabric of a city and on who can be held accountable for citizen’s rights to adequate and affordable housing.

• Keywords: affordability, short-term rental platforms, Airbnb, financialisation, investment funds, investment banks, gentrification

• Emerging trends in Real Estate: Creating an impact, a ULI / PWC Annual report for the investors

• PDF available: https://www.pwc.at/de/publikationen/branchen-und-wirtschaftsstudien/pwc-emerging-trends-in-real-estate-europe-2019.pdf

• Summary:

  • The increase of the interest rate won’t be a risk during 2019, although real estate professionals should be aware that it might change if there is a geopolitical shock to the monetary system.

  • There is a strong belief that during 2019, the Asian investment will increase.

  • Europe: 70% of PWC survey respondents agreed or strongly agreed that prime assets are over-priced, especially if we consider cases like Spain or Portugal.

  • U.S.: After years of steady growth and low-interest rates, there will be an economic slowdown during 2019. Although many real estate and financial gurus expect a correction, and new opportunities may arise due to technology, demographic changes, and the continued winding-down of traditional retail.

  • Almost 50% of the interviewees on PWC Report, expect the availability of assets to decrease and get worse in the next 5 years.

• Keywords: Europe, real-estate investment, right to housing, investment,

• 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

• Affordable Housing in Central and Eastern Europe: Identifying and Overcoming Constrains in New Member States

• By József Hegedüs, Vera Horváth and Eszter Somogyi, in cooperation with Anna Bajomi, Éva Gerőházi and Hanna Szemző. Research conducted by the Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI) and published by the European Housing Partnership (EHP) on 1 November 2017

• Summary:

  • This study first identifies the situation of new CEE [Central and Eastern Europe] member states (NMS) in the context of the European Union, and analyzes the differences and similarities among the three larger regions of the EU:

    • (1) the most developed group of countries in Northern and Western Europe;

    • (2) the Southern European countries; and

    • (3) the Central and Eastern European transition countries.

  • Our analysis uses statistical indicators from four main areas: economic, demographic, social, and housing (stock and market) developments.

  • It then focuses on differences among the eleven NMS, especially on the most relevant issues (economic growth, demography, social inequality and poverty) for understanding their housing system development patterns, and policy makers’ responses to social and economic changes.

  • The next sections give a short overview of the main trends in the housing sector, taking a closer look at privatization and restitution, housing finance, housing construction, and management.

  • The second major part of the study provides a revised approach and reinterpretation of housing affordability in the CEE context, taking into account the risks run by the social groups which are the most vulnerable to hardships in housing affordability, going beyond the most widely used measure of affordability expressed in a cost-to-income percentage ratio, and pointing out its limited usability in a CEE context (as it leaves out of the equation major issues, such as location, adequacy, the risk of inexpensive but substandard housing etc.).

  • The key section takes a look at the structure of the housing market in NMS, combining the tenure based approach with the ‘structures of housing provision’ approach, introducing a special submarket matrix to provide a dynamic understanding of affordability in the CEE context.

  • The final part the study presents recommendations on the principles of developing effective schemes to support housing affordability in a way that also benefits the most at-risk.

• Keywords: affordability, Central and Eastern Europe, CEE, New State Members, NSM, demography, inequality, poverty, policy, privatisation, finance, construction

• Report on the difficulties of access to the social stock of low-income households in France

• Published by a collective of six NGOs (le Secours Catholique, ATD Quart Monde, Habitat et Humanisme, la Fondation Abbé Pierre, l’Association DALO) on 23 June 2020

• https://www.atd-quartmonde.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2020-RAPPORT-ACCES-AU-LOGEMENT-SOCIAL.pdf

• Summary:

  • This report combines statistical analyses, interviews with different actors, case analyses, and focuses on low-income household's access to social housing in France.

  • The report notes that in France, the lower the household's income, the less likely it is for that household to obtain social housing.

  • In some areas, tens of thousands of households without housing or poorly housed remain on hold due to a lack of affordable social housing.

  • Attempts by the public authorities to fight this issue and ensure access to social housing for the poorest, whether they come in a form of binding rules (such as the obligation - often not respected - to allocate 25 per cent of housing stock to the lowest-income households) or incentives (authorization - not used - to change rents), remain without notable effect.

• Keywords: France, low-income households, right to housing, social housing, discrimination, poor housing.

• Guidelines for the Implementation of the Right to Adequate Housing: Report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context

• By the Office of Leilani Farha, Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living. Published on 26 December 2019

• It was presented during the UN General Assembly Human Rights Council, 43rd session (24 February – 20 March 2020)

• Available as a PDF file here: http://www.unhousingrapp.org/user/pages/04.resources/A_HRC_43_43_E-2.pdf

• Summary:

  • "The current global crisis in housing is unlike any previous crisis. It is linked to growing socioeconomic inequality, large-scale financialization of housing and land and unsustainable housing systems that treat housing as a commodity. In the Special Rapporteur’s experience, States are not always aware of how human rights obligations apply in the context of housing and, more importantly, of how those obligations can be translated into concrete actions to address the crisis.

  • The Guidelines provide States with a set of implementation measures in key areas of concern, including homelessness and the unaffordability of housing, migration, evictions, climate change, the upgrading of informal settlements, inequality and the regulation of businesses. All of the implementation measures are informed by the urgent need to reclaim housing as a fundamental human right. Implementation of the Guidelines will substantially alter how States treat housing, creating a new landscape where housing can be secured as a human right for all."

• Keywords: right to housing, human rights, financialisation of housing, poverty, inequality, affordability, unaffordability, homelessness, migration, evictions, climate change, informal settlements, regulation

• Financing the future of buildings in Central, Eastern and South-East Europe

• Analysis of the funding streams directed to energy efficiency in buildings currently available in Central, Eastern and South-East Europe by Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE)

• Available as a PDF file: http://bpie.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/MAPPING-FINANCIAL-STREAMS_FINAL_LR.pdf

• Summary:

  • The analysis reveals that less than 3% of the funds that could be used to support energy-efficiency investments in the region is dedicated to upgrading buildings.

  • Despite their critical role in reducing energy dependency, buildings are not perceived as critical infrastructure.

  • South-East Europe, with its building stock that consumes 38% of gas imports, is the only region in Europe with a significant gas security issue in the event of an interruption of supply.

  • The report states that "a dedicated renovation programme targeting gas-consuming buildings could reduce the current building stock’s gas consumption by 70% within 20 years."

  • Current funding streams:

    • EU funding streams: only 4.35% of the region’s Cohesion Policy Funds is allocated to demand-side infrastructure, amounting to €3.96 Billion. The European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) is not being exploited and only two projects (including a gas project) are active in the region;

    • International financial institutions: only 1.7% of the total committed amount of their investments is allocated to demand-side infrastructure.

  • The analysis also looks into how different European funding revenues are used in different countries. The Cohesion Policy Funds are the biggest funding streams for demand-side infrastructure and building renovation in the CESEC region.

  • When it comes to non-EU funding streams, the analysis notes that these do not focus on demand-side infrastructure.

• Keywords: EU, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, South-East Europe, Southeastern Europe, energy efficiency, energy transition, buildings, infrastructure, investment, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Moldova, Ukraine

• The Radical Housing Journal (RHJ) is a journal published since 2019 by a collective of self-described activist-scholars.

• There's a lot of interesting content whether you agree with their editorial line or not, and this is how they describe the project:

The urgency of the project is obviously also a product and response to the level of mobilization around the fight for the right to housing and the city that has been taking place in recent years worldwide. Perhaps, the RHJ was, in a sense, bound to happen. This said, many of us have been involved in radical housing politics and politically engaged research before concepts such as gentrification became such hot topics. For a very long time we have lacked a genuinely open place to discuss housing as a practice in the making, as a space of contestation, and as a politics in its own regard, beyond the calculus of academic citations and the confinements of normative urban studies and housing theory. Crucially, we have lacked a space that scholars, scholar-activists, activists, artists and many more could use to debate ideas, advance knowledge, theory and practices around a radical approach to housing.

• At the time of writing (November 2020), they have published three issues:

• Guidance Paper on EU regulation & public support for housing

• Paper elaborated as part of the EU Urban Agenda - Housing Partnership, and adopted at the 6th Partnership Meeting in Brussels on 23 March 2017

• Summary:

  • This paper of the EU Urban Agenda Housing Partnership raises the awareness of European institutions to continue the work on better EU regulation on public support measures and Services of General Economic Interest (SGEI) that can ensure sufficient and adequate supply of social and affordable1dwellings in urban areas. (...)

  • The paper unifies the essential results of a long time debate on that topic. It is based on scientific findings of widespread case studies of the situation in many cities in Europe. Increasing housing costs and housing exclusions, particularly in profit-oriented and speculative parts of the sector, can be limited by public and (for-profit and non-profit) private investments in social and affordable dwellings. (...)

  • The development of the last years in Europe have led to an alarming decline of public investments at local level. The uncertainty and instability of the finance framework and low expected returns prevent investments in social and affordable housing. Housing market failures endanger social cohesion in Europe, increase homelessness and poverty, and drop the confidence in democracy.

  • To address all these challenges, national and local authorities must be able to adopt adequate housing policies, including state aid measures, to create conditions and support for investments in social and affordable housing.

• Keywords: affordability, housing crisis, housing market, public investment, investment funds, financialisation, homelessness, poverty, democracy

Self-Help-Housing.Org is an online platform covering self-help housing in England and that, according to its own website, wants to:

• raise the profile of self-help housing

• map what’s currently going,

• put existing projects in touch with one another

• help develop new local projects &

• increase the resources available to self- help housing

Self help housing is interesting because it complements the market- and the state-based approaches:

“Self-Help Housing” involves groups of local people bringing back into use empty properties that are in limbo, awaiting decisions about their future use or their redevelopment. It differs from “self-build housing”, which involves constructing permanent homes from scratch.

Self help housing groups negotiate with the owners of empty properties for their use and then go on to organise whatever repairs are necessary to make them habitable. These are normally groups of people who can’t afford to buy their own housing and whose housing needs are such that they will not be offered a permanent tenancy by the local authority or a housing association (e.g. all sorts of single people, couples, young people, refugees etc).

The properties are often “borrowed” on the basis of a licence or sometimes a lease, for a specified period of time. On occasion, future plans change and the buildings may even become available on a permanent basis.

Source: Self-Help-Housing.org, What is self help housing?

Self-Help-Housing.org includes a directory of over a hundred self help housing organisations and more than 20 cases studies in England:

• http://self-help-housing.org/directory-existing-projects

• http://self-help-housing.org/case-studies

• #200Häuser

  • A Berlin-wide network bringing together and mapping 200 blocks where the landlords want to turn the existing flats into condominiums, which often results in the expulsion of the original tenant.

  • Launched in July 2019

  • https://200haeuser.netlify.app

  • On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/200haeuser

  • On Twitter: https://twitter.com/200Haeuser

• Title: Researching the Right to Housing, by S M Atia Naznin, a Lecturer at the School of Law, BRAC University (Bangladesh) and a PhD in Law at Macquarie University (Australia). Naznin is usually focusing on issues related to litigation and forced slum eviction in Bangladesh. In this article, you will find an overview of Components of the Right to Housing

• You can find the whole article here: https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Housing_Rights.html

• Summary:

  • Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) contemplates housing as adequate housing that requires living a standard life with dignity, peace and security and enables a person to utilize and expand his capabilities. The contents of adequacy must include the presence of legal security of tenure, availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, location and cultural adequacy.

  • The article also defines forced eviction is a ‘permanent or temporary removal against the will of individuals, families and/or communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to, appropriate forms of legal or other protection.’ In brief, forced eviction is a form of arbitrary displacement.

  • It further details state obligations towards the right to housing. The obligations to realize the right to housing can be categorized as specific and general obligations - which refers to a tripartite typology of state obligations to, respect, protect, and fulfil this right.

  • Justiciability of the Right to Housing is defined in the article as well, as to the capacity of the court to enforce the violation of a right due to non-performance of state obligations.

  • There are both international (i.e. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 1948, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 1966) regional ( i.e. the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 1990) and national (the constitutional provisions either recognize housing as a justiciable meaning legally binding right or a non-justiciable directive or fundamental principle of state policy) instruments on the Right to Housing.

  • The article also lists a number of useful resources in the end: from domestic (Indian) judicial decisions on the right to housing to useful books, journals and specific journal articles.

  Keywords: right to housing, law, jurisprudence, human right, human right to housing, international right to housing.

• The report "Measuring Stick-Style Housing Policies: A Multi-country Longitudinal Database of Governmental Regulations", by Konstantin A. Kholodilin and published as a DIW Berlin Discussion Paper in March 2018, contains an exhaustive list of national housing regulations covering "47 countries and states between 1910 and 2018".

• The compilation of national regulations is the table 7 in t appendix, in pages 30-64.

• https://www.diw.de/de/diw_01.c.580639.de/publikationen/diskussionspapiere/2018_1727/measuring_stick-style_housing_policies__a_multi-country_longitudinal_database_of_governmental_regulations.html

After the financial crisis of 2007-08, when many people couldn't continue paying their mortgages and the banks evicted them, their homes were publicly auctioned and often bought by corporate landlords eager to increase their portfolio.

Public auctions of foreclosed homes haven't been properly researched and are a potential source of interesting stories.

If you have information about this issue, please get in touch with Jose Miguel Calatayud, Arena Housing Project director, at jose@journalismarena.eu

• In Germany, one can look for public auctions through a page on the official justice portal: http://www.zvg-portal.de/index.php?button=Termine%20suchen

• There are companies that specialise in facilitating the bidding process to interested buyers and investors:

  • Plettner & Brecht: https://www.plettner-brecht.de/en/property-auctions.html

  • Noack Immobilienberatung: https://www.noack-immobilienberatung.de/en/hints_en.php

• Greece has an online portal where one can bid and buy foreclosed homes: https://www.eauction.gr

"To better understand how this platform accelerates the processing of auctions, we wanted to look in some detail at every property that has appeared online. However, unsurprisingly, no data is available online; nothing from the Notary Association website; nothing from Athens Bar Association website. The only way to collect this data was to loop through every property on eauction.gr to collect the relevant information and put it into a dataset of 45,918 lots that can then be analysed. Challenging, but totally worthwhile.

The dataset, which comes along with 22,119 items of documentation for each unique online auction in PDF and Word Doc format, in Greek language, gives open access to basic information on the identity of the debtor, including their name and VAT number, and the hastener pursuing the auction, the starting bid, the current status and date of the auction. New properties are being added on the platform on a daily basis. All cases can be tracked and counted so that journalists, activists, academics, advocates and active citizens can oversee what is going on in the platform while generating new knowledge and empowering affected communities."

Source: Whose Home Is This? At Least 55,625 Properties Under the Hammer in Real Estate Auctions — and Counting, published by Sotiris Sideris in AthensLive on 26 September 2019.

"The global housing crisis has caused a significant number of people to lose their homes due to unpaid debts. In Greece, frequent public auctions have been organized, representing the ultimate act of home deprivation as the effect of financialization. Stop Actions / Network United Alliance against Auctions have focused their efforts on preventing auctions from happening. They have typically done this by organizing people to physically block the entrance of the auction venue, preventing court officials and potential buyers from entering and performing the auction, or obstructing auctions once they have started. Their aim is to challenge the legality of the very process (in compliance with local legislation) and, there- fore, its results. However, the legislation regulating the auctions have changed and the strategies of fighting them have had to as well. More specifically, the new law has shifted the auctions to the internet, resulting in online processes. Hence, there is no physical space to target with direct action. In reaction to the new circumstances, Stop Actions/ Network United Alliance against Auctions have shifted their focus towards public demonstration in front of the offices of notaries who perform online auctions, raising public awareness, and putting pressure on banks to make deals with tenants and postpone the auctions. http://pleistiriasmoistop.blogspot.com"

Source: Housing Financialization: Trends, Actors and Processes (p55). Published in February 2019 by the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City, and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Available as a PDF file from https://www.rosalux.eu/kontext/controllers/document.php/405.f/9/6fd0db.pdf

• CoHabitat is an open database of community-led housing: users can browse the information about partners and projects and add new information.

• In the words of the CoHabitat Network, which manages the project:

  • (CoHabitat) is an open data and collaborative tool to document and connect community-led housing projects and their allies.

  • What is the scale of community-led housing? How many people are involved in or housed in non-speculative, collective housing and neighborhood developments? What are the existing models of community-led housing? How do inhabitants organize, plan, finance and implement their community-led housing projects? What are their difficulties? Who supports community-led housing?

  • Documenting and sharing the stories of community-led housing is essential for acknowledging the scale and potential of people-driven habitat solutions. The collaborative online platform co-habitat.io crowdsources information and stories around community-led housing. The process by which the documentation is generated is as important as the data itself: CoHabitat partners develop collaborative, youth-led documentation strategies for storytelling and data collection.

  • Source: https://www.co-habitat.net/en/tools#cohabitat-io

• The CoHabitat Network describes itself as:

  • We are a network of community-led housing organizations and allies, who work together to secure housing through collective, non-speculative, people-led solutions

• And they define community-led housing as "a process by which inhabitants organize to build cities from the bottom up. Together they plan, finance, build, manage housing, and improve public spaces and neighborhood facilities. With the right financial and political support, community-led housing processes result in permanently affordable, more sustainable and inclusive urban spaces to meet the needs of local communities and provide solutions to contemporary urban challenges". (Source: https://www.co-habitat.net/en/about)

• The CoHabitat Network was launched by UrbaMonde (https://www.urbamonde.org), an association founded in Switzerland in 2005 and then also based in France since 2015 with the goal of promoting collaborative housing at the local and international levels.

• In the US, the federal government "ordered a halt to all evictions until July 25 against tenants who can’t pay their rent in properties that have federally backed loans or that participate in certain programs".

• ProPublica also found out that some landlords were violating the federal ban by still evicting people:

"Landlords in at least four states have violated the eviction ban passed by Congress last month, a review of records shows, moving to throw more than a hundred people out of their homes."

• This is a good example of follow-up journalism: a government approves a measure and we write news articles about it, great, sure, but what actually happens then? How are those measures implemented? Maybe they aren't? How are they enforced? What consequences are they having?

• When it comes to Europe, you can check the two open databases and the interactive map initiated by the Arena Housing Project and which compile announcements and measures regarding housing during the coronavirus crisis:

• The University of Bremen acted as a coordinator of transnational research Tenlaw Project on Tenancy Law and Housing Policy in Multi-level Europe

• • The brochures provide an overview of rental dwelling and the rights and obligations of tenants in the different EU and non-EU States: the ways to find a dwelling, the conclusion, execution and termination of rental contracts, bureaucratic duties, possible traps, the role of estate agents and tenants’ associations (including contact data) as well as ways to apply for public/ social housing etc.
• Keywords: EU, housing, tenant rights, access to housing, landlords rights, European housing, social housing, rental contracts, tenancy law, housing policy

• In December 1996, the European Parliament published a report titled "Housing Policy in the EU States" (the EU had 15 members back then), in which it offered an overview of housing policies and data per country.

• This is a most interesting historical document, and it shows how worries about housing policy at the national and European level predate the housing crisis that exploded in almost every main European city during the 2010s.

• Introduction to the report:

  • "In the Union as a whole, but with considerably more emphasis in northern and western Europe, governments have long promoted active housing policies, frequently absorbing from one to four per cent of GDP. And in every Union country, with two exceptions, there is an over-riding policy objective that adequate, affordable housing should be available to all, Maclennan and Williams (1990), McCrone and Stephens (1995).

  • "The reality is, however, that almost every European government fails to achieve their laudable objective. This may reflect resource constraints for public spending, changing socio-economic patterns to which policy only responds slowly, demographic pressures and shocks (such as the vast, post-1989 influx of refugees into a ring of countries from Greece to Germany) or the inherent failure of, sometimes, expensive policy solutions. At the level of the individual the 1990s growth in homelessness and the apparent backlog of provision for the elderly, the disabled and a range of special needs are cause for concern. At neighbourhood and city level the recorded expansion, in many countries, of the economically and socially disadvantaged in both older, over-crowded and low amenity central city areas and in post war social housing estates is heightening concerns about the causes and consequences of social exclusion. At the national level housing market instability has, in the 1980s and 1990s, created particular difficulties for less wealthy home-owners in Britain, Sweden, Finland, Spain and regions of other countries. And in some countries the priority given to curtailing public spending has prompted reductions in capital spending and led to major re-orientations of housing policy; for example, in Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK and most recently France. The same policy imperatives are now questioning support systems for rental payments. Much of Europe is uneasy with its housing policies and outcomes, Dieleman (1996)."

• See the report here: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/workingpapers/soci/w14/text1_en.htm

• In April 2020, the Arena Housing Project initiated two open databases and an interactive map to compile announcements made and measures taken by different local and national authorities regarding housing during the coronavirus crisis:

  • Announcements regarding the homeless

  • Measures on evictions and for tenants and mortgage-holders

  • Map showing measures about housing during the coronavirus crisis in Europe

• The idea is that journalists and other researchers can have a comprehensive database of such announcements and measures (when and where they were made, what was promised...) so that they can do follow-up research and reporting:

  • What actually happened afterwards?

  • How were those measures implemented? Maybe they weren't?

  • Were did the money go?

  • How were they enforced?

  • What consequences have they been having?