1. Cédric Van Styvendael Housing Europe President
Eurocities Workshop ‘Access to housing assistance’, 25 October Gothenburg
Cédric Van Styvendael Housing Europe President

2. Biennial compass of Europe's housing sector
Growth has returned to our continent, but we should not forget this growth is leaving many behind and our societies are increasingly unequal. Similarly, the recent ‘recovery’ in housing markets is far from benefitting everyone and the state of housing in the European Union today remains critical.

3. In a nutshell:
The growth recovery means also recovery in house prices, which are growing faster than income in a majority of EU MS.
Housing inequalities and income inequalities reinforce each other.
Housing has become the highest expenditure for Europeans, hitting disproportionally harder the poor.
This is reflected in increasing levels of homelessness (4 million estimated by UN in Europe).
As the level of housing construction is still low, especially major cities face a housing shortage, reinforced by migration.
Responses at Member States level have been inadequate in most cases.
As cities are at the forefront of the housing crisis, they are showing a more prominent role in finding solutions.

4. Housing markets across the EU have started to speed up again: 2016 saw the highest annual growth rate in house prices since 2009.
However, there is considerable variation in regional house price levels. In the majority of countries house prices are highest in capital city areas. Overall house prices tend to be higher and growing faster in cities.

5. Overall, residential construction as a share of GDP is currently just over half than its 2006 level ( from 6 to 3.7%), and construction is recovering much slower than prices
High building standards and requirements combined with lower public funding are posing a significant challenge to the provision of social and affordable housing in a number of countries

6. Within Housing Europe, we have seen a significant decrease in the production of social/affordable housing since While some countries have not diminished social housing output (France, Austria), others have seen a dramatic reduction.
To give some examples:
in Italy the production of public housing between 2005 and 2014 almost halved, from about 9000 units per year to 4600.
In Spain, it went from over 15 thousand in 2005 to 2.5 thousand in 2014.
Housing associations in Ireland built about 1.3 thousand homes in 2005 but only 350 in 2014.
In the Netherlands, new housing production by housing associations dropped from over 40 thousand in the year 2009 to about 20 thousand in 2014.
At the same time the number of families registered on waiting lists to access social housing keeps increasing. Just to name a few:
In France the number of people registered increased from about 1.2 million in 2010 to about 1.9 million in 2016.
In Italy there are about 800 thousand families living in social housing but as much as 650 thousand are waiting.
In Ireland the number almost doubled between 2008 and 2010 and it's currently over 96 thousand.
The time people have to wait before getting a home has reached 20 years in Stockholm, up to 30 years in Copenhagen, 10 to 20 years in Amsterdam.
Based on data from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK (Source: Housing Europe General Survey, 2016)

7. The average housing cost overburden rate among people at risk of poverty in the EU has increased significantly compared to pre-crisis level, reaching almost 40% in However, it has slightly decreased among those with higher incomes.
At the same time the income gap between tenants and owners is widening in a number of countries.
Homelessness, which is the most extreme form of housing exclusion, has been growing everywhere in Europe with the exception of Finland.
People trying to enter the housing market such as youth and migrants face increasing difficulties. Working poors are also emerging more clearly as a category very much at risk.

8. The retreat of the state from housing policies is not new (it’s been happening over decades), but in some countries the crisis has exacerbated this trend by putting a further constraint on public budgets.
There is a shift in public spending from housing development to housing allowances (e.g. the UK): this means that while governments decrease funding for development of affordable housing, people still need to be supported.