Every autumn, millions of European students return to university campuses—and to the persistent, unresolved nightmare of affordable housing. For many young people, finding a place to live has become not merely a logistical challenge but a financial ordeal that can derail their futures. Skyrocketing rents are transforming higher education from a public good into an elite privilege. Despite winning admission to their dream programmes, some students are forced to withdraw—not for lack of ability, but because they simply cannot afford to live.
Public institutions are sounding the alarm about the broader implications of this housing crisis for Europe’s youth. Eurofound warns that “unaffordable housing is a matter of great concern in the EU. It leads to homelessness, housing insecurity, financial strain and inadequate housing. It also prevents young people from leaving their family home.” These problems, the agency notes, affect people’s health and well-being, embody unequal living conditions and opportunities, and result in healthcare costs, reduced productivity and environmental damage.
Once a fundamental pillar of post-war recovery and social cohesion, housing has been tragically transformed into a commodity—an investment vehicle for the ultra-wealthy, a lucrative short-term rental catering to tourists, and an increasingly unattainable dream for those striving to establish independent lives. In recent decades, the residential property market has been brazenly hijacked by rampant financial speculation, which prioritises profit over human need and turns essential homes into luxury assets. A stark indicator of this crisis: one in five Europeans aged 30 to 34 still lives with their parents, a phenomenon that underscores not just evolving cultural dynamics but profound, systemic economic barriers to adulthood.
The Great Reversal
This housing crisis transcends contemporary politics, rooted as it is in generational and historical shifts that have inverted the promise of progress. Today’s youth confront a bitter paradox: their grandparents and parents enjoyed significantly greater access to affordable housing despite living in the materially poorer decades following World War Two. Across Europe after 1945, governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain launched massive housing programmes that would be unthinkable today. Italy built millions of affordable apartments to accommodate southern workers migrating to the industrial north. France, West Germany and the United Kingdom erected extensive housing estates for the migrant workers who fuelled the post-war economic miracle.
Similarly, in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania, housing was enshrined as a fundamental right for citizens of socialist states. Workers could depend on inexpensive cooperative and public housing for entire families, even amidst the vast rural-to-urban migration that characterised the era. These programmes weren’t perfect, but they delivered what today’s far wealthier societies seem incapable of providing: decent, affordable homes for ordinary people.
This historical precedent raises a stark question that should haunt contemporary policymakers: how did poorer post-war governments build millions of affordable homes, creating conditions for widespread social mobility and stability, while today’s significantly wealthier democracies largely abandon housing provision to unchecked market forces? The answer lies not in economic capacity but in political will—and the consequences of this policy failure extend far beyond mere statistics. They are profoundly political, socially corrosive, and demonstrably destabilising to the fabric of democratic societies.
Breeding Ground for Extremism
A primary driver behind the alarming rise of far-right movements across established democracies is the pervasive sense of insecurity, disenfranchisement and abandonment felt by significant segments of the population. Workers endure mounting job precarity, trapped in low-wage, insecure employment that offers no path to homeownership. Pensioners witness the relentless erosion and privatisation of essential public services they once relied upon. Younger generations find themselves systematically locked out of the foundational milestones of stable adulthood—secure employment, independent living, family formation—that previous generations took for granted.
These profound anxieties, exacerbated by housing insecurity, create fertile ground for nativist and xenophobic movements that cunningly exploit legitimate grievances with exclusionary promises. They advocate for homes and resources exclusively for “our own citizens” while explicitly excluding immigrants, minorities or other perceived outsiders. This narrative tragically deflects attention from the systemic policy failures that created the housing crisis in the first place, directing public frustration towards scapegoats rather than genuine solutions. The far right doesn’t solve the housing crisis—it weaponises it.
There is also a less obvious but equally powerful risk: the erosion of democratic legitimacy itself. When institutions fail to provide for basic needs such as housing, trust in democratic processes inevitably declines. As the social contract frays, radical alternatives gain appeal—not because they offer better solutions, but because they promise change, any change, from an intolerable status quo. The failure to address housing inequality represents a fundamental democratic vulnerability. When mainstream parties fail to act, they risk ceding this crucial domain to authoritarian forces offering quick-fix solutions for the few, rather than structural reform for all.
In this light, the housing crisis is not merely about roofs and rent—it’s about the future of democracy itself. A generation locked out of stable housing is a generation with diminished stake in the democratic order. They have less to lose from radical political experiments and less faith in incremental reform. If European democracies cannot deliver on the basic promise of shelter, they invite not just economic dysfunction but political catastrophe. The question is no longer whether the housing crisis will reshape our politics, but whether democracy will survive the transformation.
Bartosz M. Rydliński is an assistant professor in political science at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw.
