{"id":153686,"date":"2025-06-03T02:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T02:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/153686\/"},"modified":"2025-06-03T02:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T02:41:08","slug":"affordable-housing-among-top-concerns-for-europes-mayors-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/153686\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordable housing among top concerns for Europe\u2019s mayors \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

In 2023, housing had barely made the list<\/a> of the top 10 priorities for mayors surveyed by the network. Its current status as one of the major concerns for the bloc\u2019s local leaders underscores the impact of the home affordability crisis<\/a> on cities across the continent today.<\/p>\n

In many of Europe\u2019s urban centers, mayors are facing mass protests<\/a> against rising rental and home prices. In response, they\u2019ve tried measures like rent caps<\/a>, banned tourist rentals<\/a> or launched major building initiatives<\/a>. But those participating in the survey said they desperately need EU guidance to come up with a coordinated response to the crisis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Even though housing is not, officially, an EU competence<\/a>, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen vowed to tackle the issue last year, and created the role of the bloc\u2019s first dedicated Housing Commissioner<\/a>, who is tasked with presenting a plan to increase Europe\u2019s affordable housing stock in 2026. For the first time ever, the European Parliament now also has a Housing Committee<\/a>, which is analyzing how costs can be reduced across the bloc.<\/p>\n

The surveyed mayors have plenty of suggestions for how this could be done. More than half say more EU money should be allocated for home-building through programs like the signature Cohesion Policy, which was recently tweaked to allow member countries to use up to \u20ac15 billion<\/a> in regional funds to address the crisis.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Local leaders are also calling for a revision of competition and state aid rules<\/a>, so that more public cash can be allocated to building social and affordable housing. And they\u2019re asking for comprehensive EU regulations to rein in the short-term rentals<\/a> they say are exacerbating the problem.<\/p>\n

Trust issues<\/p>\n

The mayors polled by Eurocities say budget constraints remain a major obstacle to delivering on their priorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2023, housing had barely made the list of the top 10 priorities for mayors surveyed by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[17648,5719,2311,487,2000,12921,6562,299,65408,5187,18110,25809,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-153686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-affordable-housing","9":"tag-cities","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-cost-of-living","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-eu-budget","14":"tag-eu27","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-europes-housing-challenge","17":"tag-european","18":"tag-living-cities","19":"tag-mayors","20":"tag-policy"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114617128279287387","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}