Tenth Overview of Housing Exclusion in Europe

The Tenth Overview of Housing Exclusion in Europe (2025) is a joint report by FEANTSA and the Fondation pour le Logement des Défavorisés. It is coordinated by Margaux Charbonnier and Sarah Coupechoux, with additional contributors (Charifa Mahamoud, Ruth Owen, Freek Spinnewijn, Ioana Vlad, Dora Welker). The report analyses rising homelessness and housing exclusion across Europe and situates the issue within evolving EU-level initiatives on housing and poverty.

The report describes homelessness as increasing in most European countries and argues that this reflects persistent failures to make housing an effective right. It highlights a “turning point” in EU attention to housing despite housing not being a formal EU competence, but warns that the growing focus on “affordable housing” is conceptually ambiguous. In practice, “affordable housing” is often framed as a market segment for middle-income households, while social housing is treated as residual support for the most disadvantaged; the report flags risks that public funds could be diverted toward intermediate products to stimulate private investment, while low-rent housing for the poorest remains insufficient.

Country examples illustrate both deterioration and improved measurement. Finland recorded 3,806 homeless people counted on 15 November 2024, an 11% increase from 2023, following austerity measures and reduced housing/social supports; 18% were sleeping rough or in emergency accommodation, while 62% were staying temporarily with friends or family. Denmark counted 5,989 homeless people in 2024 (up 3% from 2022 and up 20% from 2009), with nearly half of homelessness concentrated in the capital region (46%); the survey notes increases among people aged 30–39 (+14%) and over 60 (+11%). Ireland’s monitoring of emergency accommodation shows 10,683 adults in the week of 20–26 January 2025, and the report cites analysis indicating adult emergency-accommodation counts rose from 2,385 (June 2014) to 9,347 (December 2023), a 292% increase.

A major theme is the difficulty of measuring homelessness consistently across countries due to differing definitions, methods, and political/institutional contexts. The report highlights advances such as Belgium’s ETHOS Light-based counting protocol and Brussels’ increase from 1,724 people counted in 2008 to 9,777 in 2024 (+467%), while also stressing that higher numbers can reflect better visibility and counting rather than worse underlying conditions. It discusses EU-level efforts to harmonise approaches, including the European Homelessness Counts pilot (counts in 35 cities across 20 Member States over two years) and OECD work on measurement and policy toolkits.

Using the EU-SILC 2023 ad hoc module on housing difficulties, the report states that 4.9% of the EU population surveyed reported having experienced homelessness at some point in their lives, with large cross-country variation (e.g., Cyprus 11.2%, Hungary 0.8%). It also reports that past experience of homelessness is more common among people currently at risk of poverty or social exclusion (8.5%) than among those not at risk (3.9%), and that staying with relatives or friends is the most frequently reported form (76.2%), compared with sleeping rough (4.2%) or emergency accommodation (13%).

Across chapters, the report links homelessness to broader affordability pressures and calls for policy that prioritises households unable to secure housing due to insufficient resources. It emphasises that increasing supply alone will not automatically reduce exclusion, and highlights the importance of sustained public investment in social and deeply affordable housing, prevention (including avoiding evictions), and strategies such as Housing First, supported by robust and harmonised data to guide effective action.