Summer special: ‘Rent is too damn high!’ Europe’s growing housing crisis

EU Confidential

POLITICO

Politics, News Commentary, News

4.4 • 175 Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On our summer break, we're bringing this episode from January back into your feed by popular demand, looking 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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0:31.3	What you're about to hear is an episode about the housing crisis that we did earlier this year.
0:36.3	It was really popular with our listeners because, and this pun is completely intended, it hit
0:42.2	close to home, the lack of affordable housing and high rents.
0:47.2	In some places, it's the number one problem, an issue that has led to mass and violent protests
0:52.3	and become a political rallying cry.
0:55.4	It's one of those issues that can be applied to any narrative. On the left, greedy developers
1:00.7	and short-term rentals are ruining the market for regular residents. Far-right parties,
1:05.8	meanwhile, have used housing shortages as yet another way to demonize migrants. In some countries, housing was a major
1:12.7	theme in the run-up to the European election in June, with many ideas on how the EU could play
1:17.4	a bigger role in solving the crisis. We're two months on from the vote, and it seems that everything
1:22.6	you'll hear is still true. The housing crisis is no closer to being fixed. And guess what? It's possible that
1:30.6	Ursula Fonderlyne was listening to this episode too, especially the part where our guests make the
1:35.7	case for a housing commissioner. A few months after this episode aired, she announced that she would create
1:41.6	just such a post in the new commission.
1:44.9	Enjoy the show.
1:48.2	We'll be back with new episodes on the 23rd of August.
1:53.9	So right after I graduated from university, I moved to New York City.
	...

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