The European Commission has announced a raft of measures to try to solve a Europe-wide housing crisis.
High rent prices, problems with mortgages, poor quality housing and empty homes are some of the issues the EU is trying to tackle.
These are areas where the European Union has very little power. Most housing decisions are made at a local or national level.
But European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, takes the view that the problem is so widespread across Europe – from Ireland and Spain to Greece and Denmark – that the EU had a duty to try to help.
She also appointed Dan Jørgensen as the first European Commissioner for Housing.
“Europe must collectively take responsibility for the housing crisis affecting millions of our citizens, and act upon it”, he said announcing the housing plan in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“This is not just about the roofs over our heads: it is our democracy which is at stake. Because if we don’t solve this issue, we risk leaving a void that extremist political forces will take.
This Plan sets out concrete actions to make housing more affordable by triggering investments, regulating short-term rentals, cutting red tape and supporting the most impacted in our society. Because housing is not just a commodity. It is a fundamental right.
We must mobilise every euro and do everything in our power to make sure that in Europe everyone can afford a decent place to call home.”
The scale of the challenge is daunting. According to a study carried out by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), 650,000 houses need to be made available every year over the next ten years.
The JRC estimates that unlocking that number of homes will cost €150 billion per year.
But this is not just about building new homes. It is also about repurposing office blocks, renovating existing housing stock and making use of underused or empty homes, according to a senior EU official.
The EU says that its plan aims to increase housing supply, trigger investment and support people most in need.
But the European Disability Forum (EDF), is critical of the ideas which in its view pay “little attention to accessibility” and could “compound the exclusion of over 100 million persons with disabilities.”
The EDF is now urging the European Commission to amend its proposals to take accessibility issues into consideration.
Another issue the EU is taking on is the problem of short-term rentals like Airbnb which the EU says are causing “housing stress” in places like Dublin.
Short-term rentals have “contributed to limiting affordable housing supply for local residents, especially in highly popular destinations where they can represent as much as 20 percent of the housing stock”, the European Commission says.
It has now proposed a “predicable EU legal framework enabling local authorities to take targeted and proportionate measures to address short term rentals, particularly in areas of housing stress.”
An EU official emphasised that the new law would not ban Airbnb type lets. But it would give local authorities, he said, more certainty about the types of measures they could take to disincentivise short-term rentals in areas where housing is desperately needed by local people.