The soaring cost of housing is akin to a “new pandemic” sweeping across Europe, the mayor of Barcelona has said, as he and 16 other city leaders urged the EU to respond to the crisis by unleashing billions in funding for the hardest-hit areas.
The EU is expected to present its first-ever housing plan on Tuesday, after consultations with experts, stakeholders and the public. For months, those on the frontlines of the crisis have warned the problem is too big to ignore.
“The new pandemic affecting European cities is called the cost of housing,” said Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, who launched the Mayors for Housing alliance last year with the support of his counterparts in Paris and Rome.
Jaume Collboni described the housing crisis as an unprecedented internal threat to the bloc. Photograph: Sáshenka Gutiérrez/EPA
“And in the face of this new pandemic, European institutions – as they did with Covid – must allocate extraordinary funds to promote the construction of affordable housing for young people, working families and the urban middle classes.”
For the past year, the alliance – whose 17 mayors represent more than 20 million people – has been calling on the EU to do more to address what they describe as a “social emergency”: the rocketing cost of property and rents, which they say has sown inequality, strained the social fabric and, in some cases, contributed to support for the far right.
In October, after a sustained campaign of letter-writing and meetings with senior EU officials, the alliance welcomed the fact that housing policy – an area the EU has traditionally stayed out of – was firmly on the bloc’s agenda. “Now that has to translate into resources,” Collboni said in an interview.
From Athens to Amsterdam, and Bologna to Budapest, the mayors are calling on the EU to launch an affordable housing fund, similar to the Covid-era NextGenerationEU programme, to help mobilise at least €300bn a year in public and private investment to bolster social and affordable housing. They also want the bloc’s officials to draw on their local experience by giving them a seat at the decision-making table.
Budapest, Hungary. The city’s mayor, Gergely Karácsony, has joined calls for an affordable housing fund. Photograph: Zoltan Gabor/Getty Images/iStockphoto
House prices across the EU have soared by 48% between 2010 and 2023, according to Eurostat, while rents increased 22% over the same period. By 2023, nearly one in 10 people were spending 40% or more of their disposable income on housing, including 29% of the population in Greece, 15% in Denmark and 13% in Germany.
Collboni described the housing crisis as an unprecedented internal threat to the bloc, warning that failure to address it adequately could lead people to question whether democracies were capable of solving their biggest problems.
“In the same way that the war in Ukraine and the threat from Russia are always explained as a fundamental challenge to European values and democracies, so is the cost of housing,” he said. “So it needs to be given the same priority.”
In October, the EU’s first housing commissioner, Dan Jørgensen, said the EU executive was preparing to tackle the “huge problem” of short-term rentals.
A banner erected on Metropoliz, a former salami factory on the edge of Rome that was occupied by dozens of homeless families in 2020, reads: ‘Everything will be fine with income and homes for all!’ Photograph: Simona Granati/Corbis/Getty
In Barcelona, where the average price of a home has soared by nearly 70% in the past decade, forcing some out of the city and leaving others grappling with disproportionate costs, Collboni was in no doubt about the role the EU and its institutions must play in addressing the crisis.
He said: “When it comes down to it, we’re defending the right to stay in our city. These institutions, which for 40 to 50 years have been guaranteeing the right of movement for capital and people, now have to help us guarantee the right to stay.”
Failure to do so, he warned, risked ceding ground to populists who were seeking to exploit public discontent by scapegoating rather than offering workable solutions.
“We cannot remain stuck in the rhetoric of defending democracy, inclusive societies and equal opportunities if people’s standard of living is getting worse,” Collboni said. “If even with a stable job and a stable salary people cannot live with a minimum level of normalcy, then the discourse falls apart.”
