The European Manifesto to Lead the Way out of the Housing Crisis, released by Housing Europe in January 2024, calls for urgent action to address the housing affordability crisis in Europe. The manifesto outlines three key steps for the EU to ensure affordable and decent housing for all:

Embrace a new housing paradigm

• Support public, cooperative, social, and community-led housing as the backbone of national housing systems.
• Adapt EU rules (public debt, deficit, and State Aid) to account for the positive long-term social return on investment from the housing sector.
• Include housing exclusion indicators in the EU Semester recommendations to Member States.
• Address the impact of short-term rental platforms, higher interest rates, and construction costs on housing affordability.
• Establish a new Task Force led by a European Commission Vice-President to embrace the new housing paradigm throughout EU policymaking.[1][3][4][5]

Back a movement for a fair energy transition

• Include low-carbon housing supply targets in EU green policies to meet growing demand.
• Simplify access to EU funding and financing streams, attaching clear conditionality on social criteria.
• Encourage district decarbonisation that addresses local needs for affordable, age-adapted, well-connected housing using local resources.
• Foster local supply chains, quality job creation, social enterprise, and biodiversity in the approach to renovation and circularity.
• Create a transformative fund that harmonises all existing tools, earmarked annually for socially responsible renovations.[1][3][4][5]

Address the root causes to end housing exclusion

• Secure access to decent affordable housing to prevent growing homelessness and housing exclusion.
• Encourage long-term partnerships between housing providers, social services, and local authorities to deal with prevailing support needs.
• Support skills development with social service providers, local authorities, and actors from the social and affordable housing sector.
• Introduce housing exclusion as a core section of impact assessments for EU policies and use EU platforms to urgently support national and local partnerships to end housing exclusion.[1][3][4][5]

The manifesto emphasizes the pivotal role that the public, cooperative, and social housing sector can play in ensuring a socially and sustainably inclusive future for people in Europe. It calls on European, national, and local policymakers to adopt an integrated approach to tackle social exclusion resulting from a lack of affordable housing and to significantly reduce the carbon footprint in the European residential stock.[1][3][4][5]

Citations: [1] https://www.housingeurope.eu/section-133/european-manifesto-to-lead-the-way-out-of-the-housing-crisis [2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2024/757653/EPRS_BRI(2024)757653_EN.pdf [3] https://www.housingeurope.eu/resource-1874/european-manifesto-to-lead-the-way-out-of-the-housing-crisis [4] https://www.socioeco.org/bdf_fiche-document-9493_en.html [5] https://base.socioeco.org/docs/a_european_manifesto_to_lead_the_way_out_of_the_housing_crisis_final_web_version.pdf [6] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/housing-europe_urbanrenaissance-activity-7120003794104397825-5eMr [7] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/housing-europe_recognition-from-dublin-city-university-activity-7155116301252706305-hqSQ [8] https://apiv1.meetmaps.com/files/8662/ichp_sorcha_edwards_9040131111917.pdf