Resource context and provenance
This resource is the article âHow to lose friends and alienate people: The social and political consequences of Europeâs housing crisis,â published in European View and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. It is authored by Dr Eoin Drea of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies (Brussels, Belgium), which is also listed as the corresponding institutional affiliation. The article situates Europeâs housing crisis in a broader developed-world context and focuses on how shortages of affordable, secure housing shape social outcomes and political behaviour, particularly among younger people.
What the article means by âhousing crisisâ
The article defines a housing crisis as a lack of affordable housing to buy or rent, and argues that this is not limited to Europe. It cites an estimate that by 2025, 1.6 billion people will be affected by a global housing shortage, and notes that the United States is estimated to be short more than four million affordable housing units. It also points to housing prices rising faster than incomes in most developed countries over roughly the past decade, and highlights that in the EU, excessive housing costs are increasingly the main consumer expenditure item for many households, crowding out other basic needs.
Social impacts on younger generations
A central claim is that the scarcity of affordable and secure housing is feeding social alienation among young people. The article highlights delayed independent living and family formation: survey evidence from Britain (2016) indicated that 22% of 18â44-year-olds without children delayed starting a family due to unaffordable housing, and the paper argues the situation has worsened since. It also cites research showing that the age at which 50% of people begin living outside the parental home rose to 28 in the decade leading up to 2019; in Italy and Spain, the average age of leaving the parental home is reported as 30.
Mental health, resilience, and expectations of mobility
Beyond timing of life transitions, the paper stresses the mental-health consequences of housing insecurity and unaffordability. It describes a bidirectional relationship: mental health challenges can make housing problems harder to manage, while housing-related stress and insecurity can intensify mental health conditions. It also links housing difficulty to reduced resilience and to pessimism about future living standards, arguing that many young people increasingly doubt they can match their parentsâ affluence even when following traditional pathways (education, work, home ownership). Inherited wealth and family transfers are presented as becoming more important determinants of access to housing, reinforcing a divide between âhavesâ and âhave nots.â
Political alienation and polarisation dynamics
The article connects these social pressures to political shifts, arguing that perceived policy failures on housing (scarcity and rising rents) contribute to dissatisfaction with mainstream parties and to growing support for political extremes. It notes that some young voters increasingly associate housing challenges with inward migration, and that far-right parties have been effective at linking housing frustration to migration narratives. The Netherlands is used as an illustrative case: modelling from the November 2023 election is cited to show comparatively strong support among voters aged 18â35 for Geert Wildersâ Freedom Party relative to its overall result, alongside weakened support among traditional centre-right parties.
Three immediate policy directions proposed
The paper proposes three urgent actions. First, âbuild, build, buildâ: a major expansion of construction across all housing types (ownership, rental, social/affordable, supported housing for older people, and student housing), especially in high-demand urban centres, enabled by timely planning, land availability and rezoning, reuse of existing buildings, and investment in skills and labour supply. Second, it argues for placing public money and social housing at the core of the social market economy, warning that some subsidy schemes can inflate prices and that reliance on private-sector delivery has failed in cases such as Ireland. Third, it calls for fair taxation of existing housing wealth to address intergenerational inequality, noting that across the EU27, labour taxes account for about 50% of total tax revenue while recurrent property taxes accounted for 2.5% in 2022.
Overall conclusion for a pan-European housing audience
Overall, the article frames Europeâs housing shortage as a structural driver of intergenerational inequality, wellbeing impacts, and political destabilisation. By linking housing supply, social policy design, and tax structures, it argues that restoring affordability and security in housing is not only an economic task but also central to maintaining social cohesion and democratic stability across EU member states.