'Rent is too damn high!' Europe’s growing housing crisis

EU Confidential

POLITICO

Politics, News Commentary, News

4.4 • 175 Ratings

🗓️ 26 January 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode we look at a crisis that is affecting many Europeans in most EU countries: skyrocketing rents and house prices, a shortage of flats, long waiting lists for social or affordable housing — commonplace problems from Greece to Luxembourg to Portugal. Host Sarah Wheaton talks to POLITICO's Aitor Hernández-Morales and Sorcha Edwards, secretary general of Housing Europe, about the causes of the crisis, its impact across the bloc (including far-right parties using it as an election platform), and solutions at the EU level. Are there any, given that housing is not an EU competence? Then we hear from Dutch Green MEP Kim Van Sparrentak about housing challenges in her native Netherlands and her efforts to get the European Parliament and the Commission to get more involved in tackling the crisis. And Sarah speaks to Ans Persoons, secretary of state for the Brussels-Capital Region, who explains how the EU's defacto capital is struggling to keep up with affordable housing demands. And as mentioned in the show, here's where you can read the article written by our guest Aitor Hernández-Morales, together with colleagues Jacopo Barigazzi, Barbara Moens and Giovanna Coi: How do you stop the rise of the far right? Build houses. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.3	So right after I graduated from university, I moved to New York City. So exciting, but of course,
0:36.6	I mean, God, that place is so expensive. And there
0:39.9	was this mayoral election in 2009, and there was this guy, and his platform was one thing.
0:47.1	Rent is too damn high. The rent is too damn high. So he didn't end up winning the election, but it was clear that this issue is a galvanizing
0:59.3	one for voters.
1:01.7	I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential.
1:04.9	And now that I'm here living my European dream in Brussels, I'm getting a sense of deja vu. It turns out that around the continent,
1:13.0	the rent is too damn high. From Greece to Portugal, from Barcelona to Luxembourg to Warsaw,
1:20.7	it's getting harder and harder to rent a decent place or to buy a house. Waiting lists for social
1:26.3	housing have never been so long, and people are getting
1:29.7	frustrated. Protesters out in Dublin today to raise the roof on the worsening housing and
1:37.1	homelessness crisis. In the Netherlands, thousands of demonstrators took to the street. Protesters in Portugal
1:41.9	have taken to the street to rally against rising house prices. So I don't want to dig it to the street. Protesters in Portugal have taken to the street to rally against rising house prices.
1:45.0	So I don't want to dig too deep into the numbers, but just listen to this.
1:49.0	Between 2012 and 2022, rents went up by an average of 20% and housing prices by almost 50% across the block.
1:59.0	In Germany alone, there's a shortage of around 900,000 housing units,
2:03.6	and nearly 400,000 in the Netherlands. So how did we get here? What are the consequences?
	...

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