“Over the last ten years, rents have risen by 59 per cent in Berlin, 75 per cent in Madrid and 103 per cent in Lisbon.” That was how Energy and Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen opened his case on 9 September, as the European Commission adopted its Affordable Housing Act, Eunews reported from Brussels.
Housing remains a national responsibility. Brussels says the situation has still become “serious and urgent”, and the Act is its way of stepping in without taking the decision away from cities. It now goes to the Parliament and the Council under the ordinary legislative procedure, so the text can change.
A test for “areas under housing pressure”
The core of the proposal is a set of criteria for defining “areas under housing pressure”. Where a place qualifies, local authorities get the option to restrict short-term lettings. The Commission is careful on one point: the regulation itself “does not ban or restrict short-term lettings”. It sets a common European framework for authorities that choose to act, and it is meant to give them legal certainty under EU law. Some member states have already tried their own measures and clashed with the bloc’s rules.
The assessment has three steps. First comes a price-to-income check: is the average house price equal to at least eight years’ per capita disposable income? Then a deeper look at local supply and demand, population trends and whether the ratio has climbed over the past ten years, using finer local data where it exists. Last, the authority has to show the situation is unlikely to improve over the next three years without intervention.
Any measure must rest on evidence of a significant negative effect on affordability or availability for at least three years. It has to be non-discriminatory, targeted and limited in time to a maximum of five years, and it must respect fundamental rights, including the right to property. The Commission also published recommendations alongside the Act.
The numbers behind it
Jørgensen said 51 per cent of city residents consider the lack of affordable housing an urgent and immediate problem. Short-term lets are one piece of the puzzle; high rents and empty homes are the others. “In some cities, between 20 and 30 per cent of homes are vacant,” he said. Nurses, teachers and police officers, he added, often cannot live where they work.
He was also blunt about the limits of Brussels. “It is not for us, in Brussels, to make this decision,” he said, because the Commission’s role is to enable such measures within single market rules. Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera said there is “no magic bullet” for a crisis this complex. President Ursula von der Leyen noted she had promised a year earlier to tackle affordable housing, and said “today we are taking a step in that direction.”
Sources
- Housing crisis: new EU framework for affordable housing
- Affordable Housing Act: Is Brussels over-promising and under-delivering? – EU Reporter
