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Centre-left parties can build a broad new coalition of support if they tackle Europe’s deepening housing crisis, researchers have said. Conversely, ignoring it risks pushing increasingly fed-up voters into the arms of the far right.
Research by the Progressive Politics Research Network (PPRNet) suggests dramatic rises in the cost of housing over recent years have eroded support for centre-left parties – once the champions of affordable housing – and fuelled anti-establishment disaffection.
“Housing affordability has become a critical economic and political issue,” said Prof Aidan Regan of University College Dublin. “With credible solutions, progressive parties can reclaim that space, and bring voters with them – but it will need real political will.”
A Eurobarometer survey last year found that rising prices and the cost of living – of which housing costs are the largest single component – had become the biggest issues shaping voter choices in the 2024 European parliament elections.
Over the past two decades, average house prices across the EU as a whole have surged by almost half, while rents have grown by nearly a quarter. Housing costs in major EU cities increased by about 50% between 2015 and 2023 alone.
House prices and rents have far outpaced wage increases, and are the biggest financial commitment most people face. They average 20% of household income across the EU, but with huge variations. In Ireland and Denmark, for example, costs are 80% above that average.
However, the researchers noted, as the postwar view of housing “as a social right” has steadily given way to a model in which it is seen mainly “as a financial asset”, housing is also – for owners – the biggest source of wealth.
Even under centre-left governments and local authorities, postwar social housing and rent control policies have largely been replaced by large-scale public housing sell-offs, mortgage deregulation and tax policies favouring ownership.
Martin Vinæs Larsen of Aarhus University said data from Denmark – which is echoed elsewhere – showed the dramatic slowdown in social housing construction since the 1980s was not primarily driven by right-wing parties, but by the country’s Social Democrats.
“Our research shows that, after the mid-1990s, Social Democratic control of local councils simply no longer translated into more social housing,” Vinæs Larsen said. “The political effort to expand social housing effectively disappeared.”
This, he said, reflected changes in “who mostly lives in social housing, and who votes Social Democrat”. The former are increasingly likely to be less well off and from an immigrant background, while the latter are becoming more educated and affluent.
But, Vinæs Larsen added, the scale of the housing crisis today meant there was now “a real opening for social democratic parties”, because a lot of left-leaning voters such as teachers and nurses “are basically being locked out of cities”.
He said there were obstacles, including high newbuild costs, nimbyism, tighter eligibility rules that make it harder to frame social housing as serving the middle classes and “the narrative that social housing mainly benefits immigrant communities”.
But he also cited possible solutions, such as higher social housing rents – as long as they are still cheaper than private ones. “People are absolutely in the market for this,” Vinæs Larsen said. “Social housing can again be a more universal good – not just a safety net.”
Regan said similar dynamics would boost centre-left parties that manage to expand access to affordable ownership – the preferred model for most Europeans. Across the EU, only Germany has more rented homes than owner-occupied ones.
Ownership in Europe, particularly among lower-income households and the young, has fallen over the past two decades, he added, and real electoral dividends await parties that can make it “affordable, accessible, and detached from speculation”.
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To achieve that, Regan said, centre-left parties should redefine ownership as “long-term security for low- and middle-income households, not a vehicle for speculative wealth. It should complement, not crowd out, public and non-profit rental sectors.”
As things stand, inequality was “baked in” he said. “Homeowners are cushioned by wealth gains; tenants are stuck with high housing costs and little prospect of ownership; and younger generations without parental support are locked out.”
People want “somewhere to live that’s stable, secure and affordable”, he said. “It’s pretty basic stuff. But there’s a whole generation out there who don’t have that, who are paying exceedingly high rents and have no hope of buying anytime soon.”
Regan admitted the obstacles – such as rethinking mortgage systems so they enable affordable ownership without fuelling speculation – are considerable. But above all, “the narrative has to change”, he said.
“Reframing housing as essential public infrastructure is the key. Housing is where the left can turn real material struggles into political power, and really rebuild a winning electoral coalition.”
If it does not, the PPRNet researchers warned, Europe’s far-right parties will benefit. “There’s no evidence from countries such as Hungary or Austria that people vote for far-right parties for their housing policies,” said Dorothee Bohle from the University of Vienna.
“But there’s plenty that the housing crisis is fuelling [that is] increasing support for these parties. In regions where house prices stagnate or fall, voters turn to the populist right. Likewise among lower-income voters in areas where local rents rise.”
Moreover, Bohle said, far-right parties were actively “redefining housing, not as a social right but as a question of national identity, of family values, stability and private ownership. They target the middle classes and the ‘deserving poor’.”
She added that her analysis of radical right parties in Hungary, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Poland revealed a common ideology that could be summed up as “housing-as-patrimony”, tying housing inequality to nativism and “family values”.
Bohle cited the Fidesz party in Hungary as an example. It has linked housing to its pro-natalist agenda, with non-refundable grants for Hungarian families who promise to have children. “It’s about using housing to build on existing inequalities – and create new ones,” she said.
