Debate: Decent and affordable housing for all
Date: WEDNESDAY, 20 JANUARY 2021
Speaker: Kim Van Sparrentak
Country: Denmark
Language: EN

We can’t just be bystanders; this housing crisis is affecting people from all demographics: young people who are forced to stay with their families longer than they want because they can’t afford a place of their own; people who are thinking of starting a family but are postponing this since they still live in a studio, for which they can only just make the rent; elderly people who would like to move out of their family home but can’t afford to get an adjusted apartment, whilst young families are desperately waiting for a family home to move into. And this is the housing crisis for those that actually have a home, because the sad reality still is that more than 700 000 people sleep rough every night in Europe, and this number keeps on rising year after year in the last decade. This report recognises that access to decent and affordable housing is a fundamental right, a right that is guaranteed at EU level. This can’t just remain nice words, colleagues. And as a rapporteur on this topic in the European Parliament, it has become clear to me that the European rules today are often better at protecting the making of profit on the housing market than at protecting people who need a roof over their head. This has to change. We need the EU to step up its game and do its part with all the tools it has at its disposal to tackle the housing crisis, side by side with the Member States and local level that of are, of course, crucial. The report offers concrete solutions for the Commission, the Member States, and the local level to take action. And for this, I also want to thank the shadow rapporteurs, with whom I had a very pleasant collaboration. Because we can solve the housing crisis if we want to. We can end homelessness by 2030. Homelessness is an extreme form of poverty and a violation of human rights. In the coming six months, the Commission will propose its action plan on the European Pillar of Social Rights that addresses homelessness in its Principle 19. And the topic is high on the agenda of the Portuguese Presidency. The Commission should be bold and dare to propose a social moonshot strategy: an EU level goal together with all the Member States to end homelessness by 2030. Commissioner Schmit, I’m very happy that you’ve already shown your willingness to work on this, and the European Parliament with this report makes also a strong call to tackle homelessness once and for all. Let’s be partners and put the collaboration platform on homelessness that has been announced to work with a clear and ambitious target. We can also increase investments in affordable housing. Since the financial crisis, we have an average annual investment gap in affordable and social housing of EUR 57 billion per year. We need to urgently close this gap. We can, on the one hand, ensure that EU prioritise this investment for each budget and that Member States prioritise it in their recovery plans. On the other hand, the new fiscal rule book of the EU should allow for more public investment in housing. We can fight climate change, create jobs and tackle energy poverty through housing renovation. We are living through a health crisis; we have an economic and social crisis unfolding; there is a climate emergency. We can tackle all these issues by investing in quality housing through the renovation wave. We know that housing renovation can create two million jobs. This investment in renovation can help kickstart the economy. Bad indoor quality, damp housing, mouldiness – all have an important influence on respiratory diseases like Covid, so we can improve people’s health through renovation, and on top of that we can get millions of people out of energy poverty. We can stop illegal holiday rentals. In more and more cities, residents are pushed out of their neighbourhoods because it’s more profitable to rent apartments to tourists. Many cities feel powerless against these platforms when trying to get rid of illegal hotels. We can give cities more control over short-term holiday rentals through platforms like Airbnb. Through the Digital Services Act, we have to make sure that these platforms share the necessary data on rentals with cities so that rules on illegal holiday rentals can be enforced. We can make sure houses are to live in. Rather than a fundamental right to be guaranteed for all, housing has increasingly been considered only as a market to make profits through speculative acquisitions and through hedge funds and foreign institutional investors such as Blackstone, treating housing as a tradable asset. This has a dramatic effect on prices. We can do something about this by checking if the EU rules on real estate transactions and ownership, and put forward proposals to better protect mortgage borrowers from evictions. Citizens across Europe are struggling and count on us to stand by their side. With an economic and social crisis unfolding, the European Parliament will send a strong signal that we are serious about a strong, social Europe. That is why this report receives very broad support in the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, and that is why, dear colleagues, I count on your support for this report in plenary as well.