The housing crisis is at boiling point but the European Parliament doesn’t seem to know
On 10 March 2026, the European Parliament adopted its final report on tackling the housing crisis in the European Union.
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As we have been stressing to the Parliament’s Housing Committee over the past year, the stakes could not be higher. Young people are living through a housing disaster, and its impact goes far beyond the four walls of a home, it is shaping their opportunities and their future.
If you read the final report, however, you might be excused for thinking that the housing crisis isn’t that much of a crisis at all, that small tweaks are all that’s needed, that things can go on as normal. Young people just need to persevere for a little bit longer.
It’s hard to stress the urgency more clearly than this: today, a young person needs around 80% of an average salary just to rent a two-room apartment, meanwhile rents in many EU cities have increased three times faster than wages.
While issues such as large financial investors acquiring more and more housing, the chronic lack of investment in social and affordable housing, and the existence of 47.5 million vacant homes are acknowledged, the report offers little clarity on how or when these problems will actually be addressed.
If anything is clear, it’s who the report seems to be written for. In many ways, it reads like a love letter to the very interests that have made housing so unaffordable: big landlords and investment funds.
Equally concerning is the lack of a strong statement that public funding - including through the European Union and European Investment Bank - should come with firm conditions to ensure it delivers public value rather than fueling speculation. When grants or guarantees reduce financial risk, it makes sense that there should be explicit commitments to long-term affordability and reinvestment. It’s that simple.
Perhaps most tellingly, the report also gives detailed recognition to property rights but no recognition of a right to housing. Doesn’t that reveal everything.
The European Youth Forum will continue to side with all those who think the housing crisis needs to end, that real things can and should be done, that too much is on the line.
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