Surging housing costs have started to undermine the basic right to a home across the European Union, the bloc’s fundamental rights agency has warned, with homelessness rising in member states.
The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) has said house prices in the EU rose 53 per cent between 2015 and 2024, while rents climbed by nearly 17 per cent over the same period. It cited data from the EU statistics office Eurostat in its annual report, published today.
“Soaring costs affect many individuals and families, as more and more people cannot afford their homes and risk becoming homeless,” FRA director Sirpa Rautio said.
The Vienna-based agency said young people and vulnerable groups had been hit hardest, with many facing hardships that cut across their access to adequate housing and left them unprotected against eviction.
It pointed to evidence that homelessness was rising, citing an estimate by the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (Feantsa) that nearly 1.3 million people were homeless in the EU in 2025. Tenants in the private rental market were among the most exposed, the agency said, with many fearing they could lose their accommodation because they could no longer afford it.
That marks a sharp jump on the agency’s previous report, which had put the figure at about 895,000 in 2023, although the two estimates draw on different national counting methods.
GEOPOLITICS WEIGHS ON RIGHTS
Rautio said the EU was also increasingly tested in upholding rules-based governance amid geopolitical instability and security threats. Ongoing wars and an unpredictable international environment were weighing on people’s sense of safety, she added.
The report found online hate was spreading, with more than one in three people in the EU having come across content they considered harmful. Enforcing the bloc’s internet rules had proved difficult, the agency said, particularly when it came to holding tech platforms to account.
It also identified serious problems facing workers from outside the EU, including overqualification, discrimination and labour exploitation, even as member states struggled with major labour shortages. Migration has remained near the top of the political agenda across the bloc, with several governments tightening asylum and labour rules.
The agency placed the cost-of-living squeeze at the centre of its findings, arguing that rising prices were testing the EU’s ability to guarantee dignity and equal treatment. It said the strain fell most heavily on those already on the margins.
A GROWING BRUSSELS ROLE
The report covered all 27 EU member states, along with Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia. Its recommendations, which are framed as calls to action for the EU and national governments, urged member states to do more to protect access to adequate housing and shield tenants from eviction.
The findings have added to a growing EU debate on housing, after the European Commission set out its first Europe-wide plan for affordable housing in December 2025. The package included revised state-aid rules, a construction strategy and measures targeting short-term lets.
The Commission has said two million new homes a year are needed across the bloc, and has set a target of 650,000 additional units annually at a cost of about €150 billion. It has also tied the drive to the New European Bauhaus, an EU programme that funds construction it describes as sustainable and accessible.
The European Parliament has separately recognised access to decent and affordable housing as a fundamental right, adopting its first resolution on the housing crisis in March, with 367 votes in favour and 166 against. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had earlier pledged to make housing a priority, appointing the bloc’s first housing commissioner and promising an EU housing summit.
Housing has traditionally been a national competence, with the main policy levers held by member states rather than Brussels. The EU’s expanding role has therefore proved contested, and more than 50 academics have warned that the Commission’s plan risks worsening the crisis rather than easing it.
The squeeze also feeds a wider anti-poverty push. The Commission has vowed to eradicate poverty across the EU by 2050, urging member states to expand social housing, strengthen welfare support and prevent evictions.
For the rights agency, the message was that affordability now sits at the heart of whether the bloc can deliver on its promises. Rautio said the EU’s credibility on fundamental rights would depend on closing the gap between those guarantees and daily life for millions of citizens.
