The tenth Overview of Housing Exclusion in Europe, published by FEANTSA and the Fondation pour le Logement des Défavorisés, comes at an unprecedented political moment.
Europe is entering a new political phase in its response to homelessness, with the current EU mandate (2024–2029) offering a chance to reassess what has or hasn’t worked. The 2030 homelessness pledge (via the Lisbon Declaration and the EPOCH framework) remains a guiding anchor, but progress is fragile. FEANTSA points out that while new data sources (e.g. the 2023 EU-SILC one-off questions, and 2021 census counts) now offer better insight, inconsistencies in definitions and methods between countries persist — making cross-country comparison and benchmarking difficult.
The findings paint a grim picture: homelessness is rising in too many countries. In Ireland, for instance, use of emergency shelter by adults increased from ~2,385 in 2014 to ~9,347 in 2023.
In many EU states, rent and house prices have surged (≈25 % increase in average rents, 50 % in house prices between 2010 and 2023), outpacing incomes and pushing low-income households into untenable trade-offs. Among low-income households, the share of disposable income devoted to housing now approaches 37 % on average. The report also quantifies the scale of housing exclusion: over 1.1 million people in the EU are estimated to be homeless, nearly 18 million face severe housing deprivation, about 75 million live in overcrowded housing, and some 69 million in substandard housing conditions.
European housing policy is shifting, marked by the creation of a Commissioner for Housing and Energy and plans for a European Affordable Housing Plan in 2026. But the language of ‘affordable housing’, vague and inconsistently applied, covers many different realities and risks fuelling misunderstanding. The authors' recommendations for the upcoming European Affordable Housing Plan urge the Commission to:
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Keep main responsibility for housing with national/regional/local levels.
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Base action on actual needs, not just demand.
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Scale up Housing First and other housing-led models, supported via EU funding, technical cooperation, and knowledge exchange.
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Protect and grow social housing, rather than allowing it to be squeezed by profit logic.
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Ensure EU funding complements (not replaces) local and national investment.
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Set minimum standards for tenants (borrowing from consumer law models).
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Use economic governance instruments (fiscal, budgetary rules) to facilitate public housing investment.
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Guarantee that renovation and subsidy programmes prioritise households in energy poverty or substandard housing.
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Support and strengthen the non-profit sector’s role in housing solutions.
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Design the Plan to go beyond supply—embedding prevention, eviction control, rental regulation, and income support into the policy mix.
