‘Affordability crisis’: How the Western housing crisis spiralled
In 2026, a mounting housing crisis in Western nations has finally forced its way onto the agenda of some of the world’s richest governments. In
In 2026, a mounting housing crisis in Western nations has finally forced its way onto the agenda of some of the world’s richest governments. In the UK, a landmark renters’ rights law took effect in England and Wales on May 1, ending “no-fault” evictions in one of the country’s biggest private-rental reforms in decades. Across the Channel, the European Commission and Parliament have launched a new push on housing affordability, while in Washington, the United States Senate has advanced a rare bipartisan bill aimed at loosening barriers to new construction and expanding affordable housing supply. Experts say the lack of affordable housing is becoming a widespread problem in the Western world. From London to Toronto, Berlin to Sydney, as the rise in rents and home prices has outpaced wages, younger buyers are being locked out of ownership altogether, and governments are under growing pressure to decide whether housing should be treated primarily as a basic need or a financial asset. “In Canada, and in some other Western European countries, from the onset of neoliberalism, which really started to take hold in the late ’70s, early ’80s, it was chipping away [at public spending on housing],” Leilana Farha, global director of THE SHIFT, an international human rights organisation focused on housing, told Al Jazeera. “If there was an affordability crisis before the global financial crisis [of 2008], it was really for the lowest-income people. And that’s because the chipping away that neoliberalism did was very pointed against social housing [while] privatising and eliminating [existing] social housing.” In February, Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jettan pledged to build 100,000 homes per year, with 30 large-scale new housing developments spread across the Netherlands. During his 2025 election campaign, he stated: “Every pig in this country has a roof over their head, but a student or a young person can’t even find an affordable broom closet.” But what does “unaffordable housing” actually mean in real terms, for renters, homeowners, and the people shut out of housing altogether? What does ‘affordable housing’ mean? The lack of affordable housing relates to the fact that, for some time, the cost of basic housing has been rising faster than people’s incomes, forcing households to spend so much on rent, mortgages, utilities and related costs that there is increasingly too little left for food, healthcare, childcare, transport or savings. Internationally, housing is often considered unaffordable when costs exceed 30 percent of household income, according to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), which focuses on sustainable urbanisation, while the OECD uses a stricter “housing cost overburden” measure that captures households spending more than 40 percent of disposable income on housing.
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