The right to housing in Europe: dignity, property and the limits of profitability
Published on 29 Septiembre 2026 at 22:49 GMT
By Editorial
A city can attract investment while becoming inaccessible to the people who sustain it. This contradiction places the right to housing at the centre of Europe’s debate. A home provides security, privacy and continuity: it enables people to work, care for others and grow old with a measure of stability. Its economic value is real, but insufficient as the organising principle for access to a need that nobody can cease to have.
The urban dimension of the problem is measurable. According to Eurostat, in 2025, 9.6% of the population in European Union cities lived in households whose housing costs exceeded 40% of their disposable income, with both costs and income measured net of housing allowances, compared with 5.6% in rural areas. These are aggregate figures, rather than a ranking of capitals, but they show uneven geographical pressures. The indicator measures financial pressure; it does not by itself establish whether a home is suitable or whether someone can afford to live independently.
Dignity also has material conditions
Decent, affordable housing requires more than four walls. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN-Habitat emphasise that it encompasses security of tenure, habitability, services, accessibility and a location compatible with employment, education and healthcare.
This definition allows an international perspective without equating different situations. A lack of safe drinking water, sanitation or protection from heat and rain constitutes extreme material deprivation; spending a disproportionate share of income on rent creates another form of insecurity. Both call for housing to be assessed through the living conditions it enables, although their causes and responses are not interchangeable.
In major cities, housing policy cannot be assessed solely by the number of properties built. Their price, location, quality and actual availability to different income groups matter. A cheap home isolated from employment and services can shift the cost onto transport, time and care. A related debate about tourism and residents’ ability to remain in their city is explored in Naples wanted tourists. Now it has to work out how to remain a city for the people who live there.
Vienna: an alternative operating at scale
Vienna offers a concrete reference point. According to the city’s information on its model, it has approximately 220,000 municipal homes and a further 200,000 subsidised dwellings. These categories are distinct: not all are directly owned by the municipality.
The City of Vienna states that its approach includes low- and middle-income households and seeks a social mix. Social housing therefore forms part of a broad housing offer, rather than being conceived exclusively as a response to destitution.
Its relevance to other capitals lies in that institutional structure. Living alongside people from different social groups can be built into housing policy. Affordability can be treated as a lasting characteristic of part of the housing stock, supported by dedicated financing and management.
Vienna is not an automatically transferable formula. Replicating a housing target without considering land, resources, access and maintenance would make for an incomplete comparison. Its experience does, however, allow income segregation to be questioned as an inevitable outcome of metropolitan life.
Madrid: a person behind the dispute
Mari Carmen’s case has given this debate a human face. The 87-year-old woman was evicted on 23 September 2026 from her home in Madrid, where she had lived for approximately seven decades. Following several days of protests, her representatives and Urbagestión, the property’s owner, reached an agreement on 28 September to enable her return, with municipal mediation.
Mari Carmen accepted the agreement on 29 September, according to Euronews, citing her lawyer, Beatriz Duro. At that point she remained in hospital, with her return dependent on medical discharge. Acceptance of the agreement did not mean that she had already returned home.
The prospect of returning offers an individual resolution. It also leaves a political question: what protection does someone in a similar position receive when their case attracts no public attention? Civic mobilisation can prompt responses, but a social guarantee becomes meaningful when it also reaches those unable to turn their circumstances into news.
Protecting property owners too
Defending housing requires recognition of the right to private property. An individual who lets a property has a legitimate interest in receiving rent, preserving their assets and having effective procedures available when contractual obligations are breached. Protecting vulnerable households requires public responsibility and funding; placing that burden indefinitely on a particular owner is difficult to justify.
Spain’s constitutional framework helps explain this coexistence. Article 33 recognises private property and provides that its social function determines the scope of that right in accordance with the law. It also makes deprivation of property subject to justified grounds, compensation and legality. Article 47 recognises the right of all Spaniards to decent and adequate housing and requires public authorities to promote the conditions for its fulfilment and prevent speculation through land regulation.
These provisions differ in scope and legal protection. Under Article 53(3), the principles in Article 47 guide legislation, judicial practice and public authorities, and may be invoked before ordinary courts as provided by implementing laws. Article 47 does not itself confer entitlement to a particular home or extinguish contractual obligations. Nor does the protection of property remove its social function. A coherent policy can combine contractual certainty, eviction prevention, assistance and alternative accommodation, with clearly assigned responsibilities.
Profitability and its limits
This balance requires critical scrutiny of large property groups and investment funds. A relevant distinction concerns the source of profits: building and maintaining homes provides a different benefit from a strategy whose returns depend on displacing residents to raise rents.
Corporate size alone does not prove abuse. Nor is it appropriate to attribute identical conduct to all investors or identify every property-owning company as a large fund. Assessment requires evidence about transactions, practices and effects.
In their 2025 contribution to the European debate, UN-Habitat and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights linked financialisation to declining affordability and advocated mechanisms to preserve the long-term affordability of publicly funded housing.
From this perspective, it is legitimate to require private returns to be considered alongside their social consequences. When a transaction reduces residents’ ability to remain in a neighbourhood, its financial balance sheet does not exhaust the assessment of its outcome. Profitability deserves protection within predictable rules; housing dignity deserves institutions capable of making it a reality.
Europe has a demanding question to guide this balance: how many people can build a stable life in its cities? The answer depends on available homes, protected property owners and sustained public resources. A just society is also reflected in the possibility of keeping a home without being excluded from the other conditions of a dignified life.
Written by a human author, edited with AI assistance.
Further information:
Eurostat, Key figures on European living conditions, 2026 edition. Provides the 2025 housing cost overburden figures for cities and rural areas.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN-Habitat, Housing, a matter of human rights, October 2025. Supports the definition of adequate housing and the positions on financialisation and lasting affordability.
City of Vienna, The Vienna model. Documents the approximate size of the municipal and subsidised housing stock and its aim of social integration.
Euronews, report published on 29 September 2026. Confirms Mari Carmen’s acceptance of the agreement and that her return remained dependent on hospital discharge.
Official State Gazette, Spanish Constitution, Articles 33, 47 and 53. Provides the basis for checking property protection, its social function and the constitutional scope of the right to housing.
Global Society News, Naples wanted tourists. Now it has to work out how to remain a city for the people who live there. Explores the relationship between tourism, housing pressures and residents’ ability to remain in Naples.
