The EU’s response to the housing crisis: HOGAR SÍ brings its experience tackling homelessness to the future European Affordable Housing Act
The housing crisis has become one of the European Union’s most pressing social challenges. The latest data confirms this: a Eurobarometer survey published in June 2025 found that, by far, the most urgent concern among people living in European cities is the lack of social and affordable housing. This structural shortage directly affects social cohesion and the wellbeing of millions of people, and requires ambitious and coordinated responses at a European level.
Regarding the situation, Europe is not starting from scratch, but it is acting with urgency. The European Commission is currently advancing the development of the future Affordable Housing Act, a key initiative within the European Affordable Housing Plan, presented in December 2025. The Plan identifies priority areas for action and anticipates the development of this new legislation as a tool to support public authorities in identifying areas where access to housing is particularly difficult and in adopting effective measures to protect affordability and strengthen Member States’ housing policies.
This momentum is also part of a broader renewal of the European social agenda. The European Commission recently presented its new Anti-Poverty Strategy, which recognises the need to address different forms of exclusion in an integrated way and highlights the key role of housing as an enabling condition for social inclusion and access to other rights. This new direction reinforces the idea that the housing crisis and homelessness cannot be addressed separatedly, but must instead be treated as central components of European cohesion and inequality-reduction policies.
Historically, housing policies in Europe have tended to focus on the market and the middle classes, leaving people experiencing the most severe forms of housing exclusion and, in particular, homelessness, in the background. For decades, homelessness has primarily been addressed through assistencial or emergency responses, disconnected from structural housing strategies, limiting their capacity to deliver long-term transformation. However, as the housing affordability crisis deepens, the need to change this approach and place homelessness at the heart of public policy is becoming increasingly urgent, recognising that social inclusion cannot be guaranteed without effective access to decent and stable housing.
As part of this process, HOGAR SÍ participated in the public consultation launched by the European Commission, with the aim of bringing forward the experience and knowledge accumulated by civil society organisations working directly on housing exclusion, particularly homelessness.
HOGAR SÍ’s participation took place during March 2026, by responding to the consultation questionnaire and submitting supporting documentation built around one central idea: housing policy cannot be designed without taking the reality of homelessness into account. Specifically, HOGAR SÍ shared its report on Primero H and its Position Paper on the Housing Crisis and Homelessness, with the aim of making an evidence-based contribution to the design of the future European legislation.
One of the central elements of HOGAR SÍ’s contribution was sharing the experience of Primero H, an innovative instrument launched in 2021 together with ASOCIMI to expand access to housing for social projects in Spain. Primero H, Spain’s first social SOCIMI, is designed to acquire homes and rent them to organisations working to tackle housing exclusion and homelessness, at prices well below market rates. It has currently acquired 27 homes, 20 of which are already being used in HOGAR SÍ projects. This demonstrates that housing can be mobilised rapidly through partnerships with committed private-sector actors and reinforces the need for the future Affordable Housing Act to recognise and facilitate these types of instruments, which can generate sustained social impact.
In its responses to the consultation questionnaire, HOGAR SÍ stressed that access to affordable housing, accompanied by appropriate support, is an effective tool for sustainably reducing homelessness. However, the ability to scale up these solutions depends directly on the structural environment: housing availability, appropriate financing and suitable regulatory frameworks.
In this regard, HOGAR SÍ emphasised the importance of directing public policy towards a genuine increase in the supply of affordable housing. It also highlighted the need to ensure that housing developed with public funding retains its social purpose permanently or over long periods of time. Finally, it stressed the importance of consolidating the role of affordable housing providers, best exemplified by the Housing Associations operating in several European countries, including Austria and the Netherlands. Stable and professionalised actors with access to structural financing are necessary if housing solutions are to be scaled up sustainably.
HOGAR SÍ’s participation in this consultation comes at a time of growing political consensus at European level about the severity of the housing crisis. One example is the European Parliament’s recent report on the housing crisis, whose publication was welcomed by HOGAR SÍ as a necessary step towards addressing the issue as both a structural problem and a matter of rights.
Through this contribution, HOGAR SÍ reinforces its commitment to influencing European policymaking so that the future Affordable Housing Act takes into account social evidence, accumulated experience and the needs of people experiencing homelessness. The new European legislation represents a key opportunity to move towards a model that prioritises housing as a right, strengthens social cohesion and makes a decisive contribution to ending homelessness in Europe.
At HOGAR SÍ, the objective is clear: for Europe to move towards a model in which access to housing is no longer a barrier, but becomes a genuine foundation for social inclusion.
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