Rising energy prices, high inflation, and steady growth of university students have created a housing crisis for the youth of Europe, and considering the current economic outlook, many have had to go back to living with their parents.
Across Europe, younger generations are facing a housing crisis. In addition to price hikes, the number of students continues to increase much faster than housing construction, and competition for fair housing is rifer than ever, especially in urban areas.
Manon Deshayes, policy officer for social and economic inclusion from the European Youth Forum, told EURACTIV that with the current economic outlook, many had had no choice but to go back to living with family.
Prices steadily rising
The price hikes can be seen across the continent.
Paris continues to lead the pack with €29.10/m2/month for rent, according to a Deloitte study In August 2022, compared to less than half of that asked from tenants in Brussels at €14.1/m2/month.
Meanwhile, cities housing many students in the Netherlands, like the Hague and Rotterdam, have seen hikes accumulating to 6.7% and 9.7% last year, Deloitte reported.
Austria also finds itself hit hard by the crisis: rents have increased by 16% over the past year and up 40% in the past ten years due to an absence of structural rent-control reform.
Likewise, in Italy, with the average annual salary of a young adult under 35 at around €10,000, “it is difficult to sustain a rent that, for example, in Milan – for a single bed – can cost up to €600 per month,” President of the National Youth Council Maria Cristina Rosaria Pisani told EURACTIV Italy.
Student housing is particularly difficult
University students are also suffering from the crisis. Young Belgians often resort to staying with their parents or even returning once they have left – termed “boomerang children”.
In the Netherlands, the lack of housing for students has reached alarming records. According to data from the rental platform ROOM, students wanting to rent from a housing association in Leiden are, on average, waitlisted for six years and nine months.
In Amsterdam, Delft, and Wageningen, students who register for a room or studio find themselves waiting between five to five and a half years, Dutch media RTL Nieuws reported.
French students have experienced similar issues. France’s student population has been steadily increasing from 2.3 million in 2010 to 2.8 million in 2020, according to France’s statistics body, with a further net increase of 162,000 students expected for 2022 alone.
This has resulted in crowding students out of city centres they can no longer afford and into the outskirts, with sometimes less developed social and support networks and higher transport costs, left-leading UNEF student organisation found.
Buying is not an option
If rentals are becoming harder to secure, buying a property is simply not an option, which has wider societal effects, according to a policy note from earlier this year by Gonzalo Paz-Pardo, the senior economist at the European Central Bank.
“Shutting young people out of housing markets may distort their marriage and childbearing decisions, and homeownership rates relate directly to the strength of local communities, social capital and political engagement”, he said.
Fixing the problem
Belgium’s provinces have been working towards solutions.
On 1 October, the Flemish parliament announced an immediate rent freeze, or indexation, for properties with insufficient energy efficiency.
In Portugal, the president of the National Youth Council believes there should be solutions like “a cap on rents, concessions for young people who choose to live in large urban centres, and more investment.”
The German government has also been working towards solutions and making the housing crisis a priority. In the coalition agreement, the liberals, social democrats, and the Greens outlined plans to build 400,000 new apartments a year, 100,000 of which will be publicly financed.
Yet, this may be too little too late. A 2018 report by the Hans Böckler Foundation found that 1.9 million affordable apartments were missing in larger cities.
Governments EU expected to do more
Not everything’s fit for purpose, however. The French government announced last June that it would limit rent increases by 3.5% for a whole year – but it falls short of helping students, UNEF claims.
Instead, the organisation calls for creating universal financial aid of €1,110 per month (€35bn/year of public spending).
As for the government’s plan to build 60,000 new student housing units between 2018 and 2022, “only 36,000 had been built by the end of 2021”, FAGE, another student organisation, told EURACTIV.
In Poland, there are few attempts at state-backed solutions. “The Polish state has put all housing into the hands of developers. Interest is more important than the residents, to whom it has nothing to offer. There is no such thing in Poland as building low-cost housing for, at least, young people,” Ewa Andruszkiewicz, an activist with the Warsaw Tenants Association and retired journalist, told EURACTIV.
Another issue is corruption, most clearly seen in bloc hopefuls like Albania.
It is estimated that more than €700 million of illicit funds enter the country each year, and over the last three years, some €1.6 billion was funnelled into construction, with the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime (GITOC) noting in 2020 that new residential or commercial constructions were a popular way to launder money.
This, combined with increased costs for raw materials used in construction, leads to prices of up to €5000 per square metre to purchase, which in turn has contributed to an across-the-board increase in rent and purchase prices of at least 40%.
Some young Europeans believe that the EU should ensure decent housing for all (69% for, 21% against), according to a report published by the Foundation For European Progressive Studies and ThinkYoung.
No good housing affects mental health and prevents youth from finding quality employment, which in turn “prevents you from finding decent housing, and it’s kind of a vicious cycle, and we need to break the cycle,” Deshayes told EURACTIV.
Reporting by: (Alice Taylor | Exit.al; Federica Pascale & Laura Miraglia | EURACTIV.it; Charles Szumski | EURACTIV.com; Theo Bourgery | EURACTIV.fr; Lusa.pt; Bartosz Sieniawski | EURACTIV.pl; Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg; Oliver Noyan & Laura Kabelka | EURACTIV.de; Sofia Stuart Leeson | EURACTIV.com)
