Europe’s housing crisis is fuelling the rise of the far right. Our research shows how to address it | Tarik Abou-Chadi, Björn Bremer and Silja Häusermann

. UK edition

A protest for the right to affordable housing in Amsterdam, February 2023
A protest for the right to affordable housing in Amsterdam, February 2023.
Photograph: Hollandse Hoogte/REX/Shutterstock

The mantra of ‘build, build, build’ misses something crucial: that few can afford these new homes, say Tarik Abou-Chadi, Silja Häusermann and Björn Bremer

Housing costs across Europe have become a growing burden for many households, both for those trying to buy and those trying to rent. Over the past decade, property prices have surged faster than incomes in many European countries. The same is true for rents, which have increased exponentially in large cities but have also increased substantially in suburban areas and smaller university towns.

Given how much housing costs affect Europeans’ quality of life, it is comparatively absent from the agenda of progressive political parties. When politicians do emphasise housing, the focus is usually solely on building more houses. Former German chancellor Olaf Scholz, for example, promised to build 400,000 new homes in Germany every year – a goal his government failed to reach by some distance. At the same time, far-right parties such as the Freedom party (PVV) in the Netherlands or Chega in Portugal have made the housing affordability crisis into a campaign issue. Their equation is simple: housing should be available and affordable only for nationals.

What are the hurdles that keep other parties from politicising housing? And what would a progressive European housing agenda look like? As part of the Progressive Politics Research Network – an initiative to promote social science research findings to a broader audience – we have published eight research briefs to that end.

European societies fundamentally differ in how housing is organised. Home ownership remains the dominant form of housing in most European countries, but ownership rates vary significantly. In some countries – including Germany, Austria and Switzerland – more than half of the population lives in rented accommodation. And as home ownership becomes increasingly unaffordable, renting has become the modal form for younger people, especially in Europe’s larger cities.

To compare housing politics across countries, it is helpful to think of two policy paradigms: housing as an asset v housing as a social right. In the housing as an asset approach, housing is seen as an investment to generate financial returns – a system that depends on rising prices. Over the past decades, this has become the dominant paradigm. Even parties of the left have significantly reduced social housing, deregulated rental markets and created new investment and market structures that affect house prices.

These reforms have eroded housing as a social right. The inequalities of who can live where, and under what conditions, have created massive grievances among a large share of the population. These grievances contribute to the increasing electoral success of the radical right.

If progressive parties want to reclaim this issue, they have to accept that housing is fundamentally a question of distribution and redistribution. They should not treat housing as an issue where parties simply compete over who is more competent, or who can deliver more units. Housing policy involves profound choices about who benefits and who bears costs, about the balance between markets and collective responsibility, about whether housing is primarily an asset or a social right. From a progressive perspective, the goal should be clear: housing needs to be affordable, secure and nonspeculative.

To achieve this, progressive parties first need to reinvest in social housing as part of a broader strategy to increase supply. Yet simply recreating the social housing of the 1970s won’t work. Social housing cannot be revitalised today if it is only targeted at the poorest: tight eligibility rules can undermine cross-class political support and lead to stigmatisation and exclusion. As an example, in Vienna, around 40% of households live in limited-profit or public housing: this broad access, together with strong rental protections, helps build the broad political coalitions necessary to support sustained investment.

Second, progressive housing policy must address both supply and distribution. The fixation on “build, build, build” misses a crucial fact: under-occupation of existing housing stock now rivals overcrowding in many European countries. In Germany, demographic factors – especially age – correlate with housing inequality more than income does. Younger households and immigrants face severe overcrowding, while older households are increasingly under-occupied. Policy must incentivise the redistribution of existing space alongside new construction.

Third, increasing housing density is unavoidable but must be done correctly. Large-scale surveys from cities in Europe and the US show that public acceptance of densification depends critically on design and implementation. When projects include participatory governance, protect neighbourhood amenities and green space, and ensure affordability, resistance drops significantly. Densification without social inclusion and environmental sustainability will fail politically.

This agenda requires substantial public investment. Wealth-to-income ratios are driven largely by housing booms, providing funding resources. While inheritance taxes remain unpopular, net wealth taxes and reformed capital gains taxes command public support – especially when revenues are credibly tied to popular investments such as affordable housing. Austria demonstrates how dedicated housing funds, fed by modest levies and reinvested profits from limited-profit providers, can sustain large-scale provision.

Progressive parties must also leverage private investment strategically. Land-use planning, construction regulation, and public loans can be tied to conditions: obligations to reinvest profits, provide housing at cost-based rents, respect limited-profit constraints, or meet social and ecological criteria. Housing policy is not simply about market v state, but about steering both toward social ends.

The European far right has seized on housing precisely because progressives have abandoned it. Their answer – blaming immigrants for scarcity – is both morally and economically wrong. However, it will continue to gain traction if the centre left offers only market solutions and technocratic supply-side fixes.

Housing is fundamentally a question of distribution and social rights, not merely construction targets. It shapes who can live where, access what opportunities, and build what kind of life. A progressive housing agenda must be bold enough to challenge the norm that housing has become an asset for wealth accumulation, and ambitious enough to build the broad coalitions of support necessary for sustained public investment. Our research shows such policies can work and command public support. The question is whether progressive parties have the will to fight for them and offer a real alternative to the far right’s politics of scarcity and blame.