[Statement] The European Union’s Affordable Housing Plan is a tool for opening up social housing and affordable housing to the financialized markets
Europe is facing a housing crisis not because there are too few homes, but because housing has been transformed into an asset designed to accommodate the profit-seeking activities of an expanding range of actors – from private construction companies and institutional infrastructure owners to rentiers of all sizes – at the expense of the social majority. Rents and housing prices are rising exponentially faster than incomes, public housing stocks have been dismantled, and homes are increasingly treated as vehicles for profit rather than as places to live. Against this backdrop, the European Commission presents the so-called European Affordable Housing Plan as a response to the crisis. In reality, the Plan remains captive to free-market supply-and-demand doctrines and, by relying on the European Investment Bank, it deepens the financialized markets that produced the crisis. We have reached a point where treating housing as a commodity and asset class for profit is actively jeopardising housing as a social good and a fundamental right for growing segments of society. This situation demands a drastic shift in direction.
One year ago, the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City released its statement on the European Affordable Housing Plan. At the time, the Plan existed only in a few preliminary documents and declarations, but we already had a sense of its direction under the influence of pro-real estate lobbies. In the middle of December 2025, the European Commission launched a Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee, and the Committee of the Regions entitled “The European Affordable Housing Plan.” The latter outlines 10 actions across 4 pillars to address the housing affordability crisis that the Commission sought to tackle.
Our current statement recalls the attention of stakeholders and people expecting from the European Affordable Housing Plan to solve the housing crisis, about the fact that this Plan defines measures and financial sources for a market-led investment framework for social and affordable housing, and, by doing this, is about increasing the financialization of the housing sector. The European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City reiterates its position. The housing crisis cannot be solved by the same markets that created it. Any serious response requires removing a significant share of housing—at least 40%—from market dynamics and restoring its social and use value through public, social, and non-commodified provision.
A Commission Communication is not a legally binding instrument and does not require Parliament/Council approval. It serves as a policy strategy that provides guidance on interpreting existing law and may also signal the EC’s intention to propose legislation in the future. Still, we express concerns about how this Plan will encourage the ongoing neoliberal politics of the Member States to refrain from investing public funds in public housing and from regulating private developers and institutional investors in ways that could support the large categories of people in housing need.
The first two pillars of the Plan define the major directions of the EC’s planned intervention.
(1) The proposed framework solution is to boost housing supply, as the EC considers that rebalancing supply and demand would make homes more affordable. This diagnosis and solution do not account for the gap between people’s income and housing (and living) costs, nor for the mechanisms by which housing (and energy) as an asset class drives the continuous increase in market prices, while states do not regulate the market to respond to people’s housing needs. Measures such as simplifying administrative procedures for new construction or accelerating permits do not restore affordability; they generate additional housing for the market, designed to maximise exchange value and financial returns rather than social use. Catchy keywords such as innovation, decarbonisation, or community-led solutions cannot conceal the absence of effective measures to restore the social or use value of homes.
(2) The Plan empowers the banking and non-banking financial institutions through the Pan-European Investment Platform and the European Investment Bank. It suggests using financing models such as debt/equity, blended finance, housing bonds, and revolving funds, presenting them as tools for affordable and social housing. They do not solve the housing crisis. In practice, these mechanisms increase the financialization of the entire housing sector, which created the affordability problem in the first place.
The third and fourth pillars of the Plan define measures to address two concrete issues: (3) financial speculation and short-term rental, and (4) the lack of access for low- and middle-income people to adequate homes.
It is striking that the measures proposed do not address the damage to housing affordability caused by institutional investors using pension and insurance funds, but instead aim only to address short-term profit-seeking investments. The Commission limits its intervention to improving market transparency by collecting data on housing price dynamics, property ownership, and real estate transactions. Registration requirements and data-sharing mechanisms are offered in place of regulatory tools to address the effects of short-term rentals on affordability. The Commission refuses to provide instruments to the Member States that could effectively regulate the activities of financial actors or property owners in the housing sector, and assumes that opening up social and affordable housing to the markets will neutralize the negative effects of the already financialized private housing sector.
No wonder, then, that the EC considers the supply of affordable housing for young people, students, and essential workers by non-profit or limited-profit housing providers, in parallel with efforts to encourage these groups to seek housing in the private rental market or pursue affordable homeownership opportunities. Even homelessness is addressed through partnerships with private and philanthropic actors rather than through a decisive expansion of public housing.
The European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and to the City calls on the European Parliament (representing citizens) and the Council of the EU (representing member state governments) to express their disagreement with the EC’s European Affordable Housing Plan, as it was elaborated in the Commission’s Communication from December 2025. Instead of taking for granted the vision and actions of this Plan, our representatives in these decision-making bodies should promote the following minimum requirements in any future housing-related legislative proposal:
Create a substantial stock of public and social housing to meet the needs of diverse social and income groups, including people experiencing homelessness, and to counter the effects of the financialized housing market.
Expropriate a significant percentage of properties owned by institutional landlords and private developers to transfer them to municipal and public housing stock.
When institutional owners’ properties remain vacant for more than two years, use them to address social housing needs in cities.
Control housing, land, and energy prices and private rental costs to ensure their affordability compared to people’s income and protect tenants from evictions.
We also call on all grassroots organisations affiliated with and sympathetic to the EAC to take decisive, targeted, direct actions to pressure the political and financial institutions that benefit from the European Commission’s measures during the upcoming Housing Action Days 2026, between 22 and 29 March.
Collectively, we must fight; together we will win!
15.01.2026
