Resource context
This resource is an episode of The Europeans, a podcast about European affairs. It is written, reported, and produced by Katz Laszlo and edited by Jasmin Baoumy and Katy Lee, with editorial support from Dominic Kraemer, Morgan Childs, Uršula Zaletelj, and Maja Stepančič. The episode discusses housing policy across Europe, focusing on what drives the housing crisis and which policy levers matter most.
Myth-busting: what does not explain the crisis
The episode challenges common narratives that dominate public debate. It states that “endless research” shows asylum seekers are not driving Europe’s housing crisis, and that such claims distract from underlying causes. The reporting emphasizes that deregulation of renters’ rights and wealth inequality are central drivers of unaffordability.
Scarcity vs affordability, and the role of empty homes
While building new housing is described as important (and part of successful approaches such as Vienna’s), the episode argues that many European cities face limits on space, rising construction costs, and high rates of project failure, with insufficient government investment and limited private finance for affordable homes. It reframes the core issue as affordability rather than pure housing scarcity, noting that even capital cities can have tens of thousands of empty homes alongside rising homelessness. In Amsterdam, it cites about 10,000 empty homes and about 15,000 homeless people.
Wealth gaps between owners and renters
Using the Netherlands as a case study of extreme inequality, the episode cites research that homeowners are around 90 times richer than renters. It also describes typical housing-cost burdens: renters often spend about 30–40% of income on housing, while homeowners are around 10% when measured as mortgage interest (with principal repayment treated as saving because it builds an asset). It also highlights concentration of housing wealth: the top 10% of the Dutch population is said to own about 40% of housing wealth, while the bottom 50% owns none.
Housing tax as a key policy lever
A major conclusion is that tax policy strongly shapes housing outcomes and can worsen or relieve inequality. The episode argues that many European tax systems favour homeowners, making housing an attractive asset compared with other investments. It focuses on mortgage interest tax deductions as a prominent example, described as a rare point of agreement among economists as a policy that should be scrapped. For the Netherlands, it cites a total of 11 billion euros in mortgage interest tax deductions in one year, contrasting this with the scale of other housing interventions discussed in the series.
Europe-wide relevance and evidence from comparisons
Although the Netherlands is presented as an extreme case (including having both mortgage interest tax relief and no capital gains tax on primary homes), the episode says similar homeowner-favouring tax rules exist across Europe. It cites a Belgium comparison: after 2015, the Flemish-speaking part scrapped the mortgage interest deduction while the French-speaking part kept it, and housing prices reportedly rose more slowly where the deduction was removed.
The politics and emotions of reform
The episode notes that reform is politically difficult because homeownership is a majority status in many European countries, and policy change may require reducing homeowners’ privileges to improve renters’ position. It also highlights “shame” as a barrier to collective action: people in inadequate or insecure housing may internalize the issue as personal failure, which can silence demands for structural change and protect the status quo.