Chapter 6:
Housing under pressure: affordability and insecurity
Quality of life
In 2000, the highest minimum wage in the EU was more than 47 times higher than the lowest. By 2025, that gap had narrowed to just under five times – a remarkable convergence, documented in Chapter 3. Yet for a young worker in Dublin or Lisbon earning close to the minimum wage, the question is not only how much their wage has grown but what it can actually pay for. And increasingly, the answer is: not a home of their own.
Over the past decade and a half, housing costs have risen substantially across the EU: since 2010, average house prices increased by 55.4% and average rents by 26.7%. These averages mask the severity of the problem in some regions and for certain groups. In several Member States, prices have more than tripled. And within countries, increases in the cost of housing in urban centres – precisely where employment is concentrated and where young workers, in particular, tend to be – have far outpaced average trends.
This chapter explains how rising housing costs translate into affordability stress and insecurity, and why exposure is uneven across tenures, income positions and life stages. It focuses in particular on young adults, and the ability of housing systems to accommodate them, while also examining other groups facing heightened vulnerability. These include minimum wage earners, whose housing pressures were introduced in Chapter 3, and single-parent households, who face compounding disadvantages across several of the dimensions examined in this yearbook.
'Housing is one of the most tangible dimensions of quality of life. It influences living standards, financial security and the ability to plan for the future'
Housing as a pillar of quality of life
Housing affordability is not only about the level of costs. It is about how costs interact with household resources and tenure. When housing costs rise faster than incomes, households with limited savings face a tighter budget constraint. This can translate into arrears on housing- or utility-related payments, a higher risk of having to move because housing becomes unaffordable, and trade-offs that affect living standards and well-being.
Recent findings from Eurofound’s Living and Working in the EU e-survey show how this pressure is distributed across groups and Member States. Among those who do not own their home, 12.4% across the EU reported in 2025 that it was likely they would have to leave their dwelling within three months because they could no longer afford it. The variation across countries is wide: housing insecurity among non-homeowners is highest in Greece (29%), Slovakia (22%) and Latvia (21%), and lowest in Austria (less than 2%), Malta (4.4%) and Germany (5%) (Figure 27).
Limited financial resilience among renters compounds their exposure to housing cost shocks. As Chapter 1 documented, private renters are substantially more likely than homeowners to report having no savings at all, and most renters with savings report only a low buffer. Those with the smallest cushion are most exposed to the cost pressures that have characterised the past several years.
Tenure structures and exposure to housing cost shocks
Tenure matters because it shapes both the level of housing costs that households face and their capacity to absorb cost shocks. Tenure structures vary markedly across countries. Data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) show that homeownership remains dominant in many central and eastern European Member States, while renters account for close to half the population in Austria and Germany (Figure 28).
Eurofound analysis of the same data points to systematic distributional exposure: apart from in a few high-ownership central and eastern European countries, most people in the bottom wealth quintile are renters, and the share of renters in the lowest wealth quintile increased between 2017 and 2021. In terms of affordability, tenants generally face higher housing cost burdens relative to income than mortgage holders. Rent or utility increases can translate more quickly into affordability problems for tenants than for homeowners, given lower incomes and weaker savings among renters.
The broader role of housing wealth in overall wealth inequality is examined in Chapter 10. Here, the key point is that tenure and savings influence exposure to housing market pressures – and that these pressures fall hardest on those with the least accumulated wealth.
Eurofound housing dashboard – tracking housing conditions across the EU
Eurofound has developed an online housing dashboard to compare housing conditions across Member States using a harmonised set of indicators. The dashboard groups indicators into four dimensions that align with Eurofound’s analytical framework: housing exclusion, housing insecurity, housing unaffordability and housing inadequacy. Figure 29 illustrates one of the subdimensions of the dashboard – the inability to keep a home adequately warm.
Users can explore patterns across countries and disaggregate results by population characteristics – for example, age, household type, tenure and income – to examine how housing pressures are distributed across groups.
Young adults: housing as an entry-point stress test
For young adults, the housing market functions as a stress test – one that reveals whether housing systems can accommodate people at the point of entry into independent living. Eurofound research applies a four-part framework to the challenges they face: housing exclusion, housing insecurity, problematic housing costs and housing inadequacy. Taken together, these dimensions show that rising housing costs affect not only budgets but also living arrangements, housing quality and life transitions.
Housing exclusion: remaining in the parental home
One of the most visible signs of housing exclusion is the phenomenon of young adults remaining in – or returning to – the parental home. In 2024, the estimated average age at which young people across the EU left the parental home was 26.2 years, with large cross-country differences: below 22 years in Denmark, Finland and Sweden, and above 30 years in Croatia, Greece, Italy and Spain.
Among 25 to 34-year-olds, around 30% across the EU continued to live with their parents in 2023, again with wide variation across countries (Figure 30). This indicator captures one dimension of how affordability constraints translate into delayed housing independence, particularly where access to affordable renting or home purchase is limited. The connection between housing costs and delayed independence is not confined to the lowest earners.
As documented in Chapter 3, young minimum wage earners are significantly more likely to live with their parents than better-paid peers, and this difference is widest in high-wage economies where housing costs absorb a large share of income. For these workers, housing costs do not merely burden household budgets – they can prevent independent living altogether.
Housing insecurity and cost pressures for young adults
EU-SILC-based indicators show that younger adults spend a higher share of income on housing and are more likely to be overburdened by housing costs (Figure 31). In 2023, the housing cost overburden rate – the share of people spending more than 40% of their income on housing – was 23% among those aged 18–29, compared with 12% among those aged 30–39, indicating a steep age gradient around the transition to independent living.
Arrears patterns also differ by age. In 2023, 4.7% of 18–29-year-olds were in arrears on rent or mortgage payments in the previous 12 months, and 7.9% were in arrears on utilities. These are higher rates than for any older age group and point to a segment of young adults for whom housing costs are not merely burdensome but actively destabilising.
Housing inadequacy and life impacts
Affordability pressures are linked to adequacy constraints. Overcrowding is notably higher among younger cohorts: in 2024, the overcrowding rate among 15–29-year-olds was 26.5%, compared with 16.9% for the population as a whole, with substantial variation across countries.
A further dimension is how housing constraints influence life choices and well-being. Survey evidence on housing preferences in four Member States – Czechia, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden – reveals substantial mismatches between young adults’ current and preferred living arrangements. Among those living with their parents, just 40% would choose to remain in that arrangement if an alternative were available. The affordability of housing relative to income was the most prominent reason that respondents did not live in their desired arrangement.
Among those whose current living arrangements do not match their preference, between 20% and 39% reported that their job or career choices were limited by their housing situation. Around one-quarter reported difficulties moving out of the parental home. Just over one in six reported delaying having children, and around 17% reported mental health impacts (Table 2).
Beyond youth: other groups facing housing strain
While the entry-point stress is especially visible among young adults, housing pressure is unevenly distributed more broadly. Two groups stand out in Eurofound’s evidence: minimum wage earners and single-parent households.
Minimum wage earners: housing as an adequacy stress test
Chapter 3 examined whether the real gains in minimum wage purchasing power documented across the EU are sufficient to ensure a decent standard of living. Housing costs provide a revealing stress test for this question, because they represent a large, unavoidable expenditure that has been rising sharply.
Eurofound analysis of EU-SILC data for single-adult households shows that, on average in the EU, minimum wage earners living alone spend 34.8% of their disposable income on housing, compared with 26.2% for those earning above the minimum wage (Figure 32). Among tenants, proportional housing costs rise to 37% for minimum wage earners, against 30.1% for those earning more. The perception gap is equally clear: 35.6% of minimum wage earners report housing costs as a heavy burden, compared with 21.7% of those earning above the minimum wage.
Where housing takes a larger share of income, the room to absorb other cost increases or build savings is smaller – reinforcing the limited financial resilience documented in Chapter 1.
Single-parent households: compounding dimensions of housing vulnerability
Single-parent households face elevated risks across every dimension of Eurofound’s housing framework. They are almost three times more likely than other household types to be in rent or mortgage arrears (8.2%, compared with 2.6%) and twice as likely to expect to have to leave their home within three months because they can no longer afford it (10.6% versus 4.5%). They are also more likely to be overburdened by housing costs (17.5% versus 12.5%) and to live in overcrowded dwellings: 27.9%, compared with 13.8% for two-parent households with one child and 16.3% for those with two children (Figure 33).
These patterns underline how household composition can amplify housing stress. Single parents – disproportionately women, with an average age of 34.2 years – face worse social environments and higher work intensity in the workplace, provide more unpaid care and now bear the steepest housing cost burdens. These are not separate disadvantages; they reinforce each other.
Single-parent households: compounding dimensions of housing vulnerability
Single-parent households face elevated risks across every dimension of Eurofound’s housing framework. They are almost three times more likely than other household types to be in rent or mortgage arrears (8.2%, compared with 2.6%) and twice as likely to expect to have to leave their home within three months because they can no longer afford it (10.6% versus 4.5%). They are also more likely to be overburdened by housing costs (17.5% versus 12.5%) and to live in overcrowded dwellings: 27.9%, compared with 13.8% for two-parent households with one child and 16.3% for those with two children (Figure 33).
These patterns underline how household composition can amplify housing stress. Single parents – disproportionately women, with an average age of 34.2 years – face worse social environments and higher work intensity in the workplace, provide more unpaid care and now bear the steepest housing cost burdens. These are not separate disadvantages; they reinforce each other.
Housing policy choices and trade-offs
Eurofound analysis frames housing affordability as a multidimensional challenge shaped by the interaction of housing supply, household resources and rental market structures.
There is a key distinction between demand-side interventions, which affect households’ purchasing power, and supply-side interventions, which affect the housing stock and provision. Where supply is constrained – as it is across much of urban Europe, where construction output has fallen well below estimated demand – demand-side support risks being absorbed into higher prices or rents. Measures that expand the number of dwellings, whether through new construction or by bringing vacant and underused stock into use, more directly address the underlying constraint. For creating new housing opportunities, particularly for young people, supply-side solutions have more potential than demand-side monetary and tax benefits.
In rental markets, balancing stability and access is a central design challenge. Measures that strengthen tenure security for incumbent tenants can have different implications for outsiders – new or prospective tenants, often young adults – if they reduce mobility or limit availability at the point of entry. Tenure neutrality in fiscal policy – treating owning and renting equally – is identified in Eurofound’s analysis as a factor that can reduce distortions in housing choices. Hybrid pathways such as rent-to-own or equity sharing can also broaden access.
In December 2025, the European Commission presented the first-ever European Affordable Housing Plan, recognising that the housing crisis is hampering both the competitiveness of the EU economy and social cohesion. The plan’s focus on increasing housing supply, triggering investment and supporting the people most affected responds directly to the pressures documented here and in Chapter 1. These findings also speak to Principle 19 of the European Pillar of Social Rights, which provides that access to social housing or housing assistance of good quality shall be provided for those in need and that vulnerable people have the right to protection against forced eviction.
Housing as a systemic quality-of-life issue
The evidence brought together in this chapter shows housing as a central channel through which economic pressures translate into insecurity and constrained life choices. Housing insecurity is concentrated among non-homeowners and varies widely across Member States, while limited savings among renters increase exposure to further cost shocks.
Housing pressures are not experienced in isolation. They interact with the wage adequacy questions examined in Chapter 3, the care responsibilities and labour market exits documented in Chapter 4, and the financial strain and declining optimism described in Chapter 1. For many households, housing is the single largest cost – and the one over which they have least control.
Whether Europe's commitment to affordable housing translates into meaningful relief will depend on the pace of supply-side responses, the implementation of structural reforms and the extent to which incomes can keep pace with rising housing costs in the years ahead. The mental health consequences of these pressures, and others, are examined in Chapter 7.
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