Since the early 2000s, owning or renting a dwelling has increasingly become in Europe a toil for many.
National policies have been reducing the investment on council housing and at the same time
households’ incomes and spending power are decreasing, putting low- or unstable-income people at risk
of homelessness. As the “availability of” and “access to” decent housing has been dropping in many
European large and medium-size cities, EU policies are trying to address policies for “affordable”
housing solutions. While this term has been widely used in an economic perspective, affordability should
tackle on a wider range of issues embracing financial aspects, solutions for social support, funding
measures and spatial models, as tools to improve the conditions for “just” cities to thrive.
