On Tuesday 5 March in Liège, the ministers responsible for housing policy in the Member States of the European Union adopted the ‘Liège Declaration: affordable, decent and sustainable housing for all’, at a Housing Summit organised by Wallonia and its Minister for Housing, Christophe Collignon, under the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council.
The declaration calls for a “‘European New Deal’ for affordable and social housing with a dual objective: - proposing solutions to improve access to affordable and decent housing for all within the European Union through an EU housing platform; - promoting access of social housing organisations to long-term European financing from the EIB and the European Commission”.
“Housing affordability is a growing challenge in the EU. While there is no single set of commonly used indicators to measure housing affordability, several trends, shared by the European Commission, indicate a strong tendency towards significant increases in housing prices and rents, combined with a lack of supply of social and affordable housing”, the signatories note.
Over the last decade (from 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2022), average rents in the EU have risen by 19% and house prices by 47%, with house price growth consistently outpacing income growth, according to the Belgian Presidency press release.
In 2022, almost one person in ten in the EU was facing excessive housing costs, i.e. living in a household where total housing costs represented more than 40% of total disposable income, with a significant increase recorded since 2020. In addition, around 900,000 people are homeless in Europe.
On Tuesday, the ministers discussed two key issues: - best practice in climate-resilient renovation and construction programmes; - diversification of funding sources, including the European Recovery Plan, NextGenerationEU, zero-interest loans from the EIB, and the inclusion of private and alternative financing in programmes to create and renovate social and affordable housing.
See the Liège Declaration: https://aeur.eu/f/b61 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)