Last October, the center-left Dutch political party D66 and its young leader, Rob Jetten, roared to a surprising victory over the far right in a snap national election. D66's electoral triumph was fueled by a campaign narrowly focused on the Netherlands' acute housing crisis, which has resulted in a shortage of more than 400,000 housing units.
But the Netherlands is not alone. Housing shortages have become increasingly pervasive in cities across Europe, with home prices in the European Union up 60.5% over the past decade, according to the European Council. Now, after years in which immigration or defense has dominated the political conversation in Europe, housing is quickly becoming the new hot-button issue for parties to address.
Housing is not just an issue with which national governments are contending. The crisis is so bad — and its roots are so varied and deep — that European institutions in Brussels are proposing new housing strategies and legislation that could bring down costs and increase supply throughout Europe.
"The housing crisis is hitting people so hard in their personal life and their liberal freedoms, the freedom to live their life the way they want," MEP Brigitte van den Berg (Renew Europe, NL), a member of D66 who has long worked on housing issues, told The Parliament. "Housing is concern number one for our citizens."
This article is part of The Parliament's special policy report "Addressing Europe's housing crisis"
How D66 made housing political
In the Netherlands, the roots of the current housing shortage go back to the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, initially caused by risky mortgages in the U.S. That is when home construction in the Netherlands and across Europe dropped drastically, according to Hans Koster, a professor of urban economics and real estate at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit.
A lack of new homes coming on the market and higher levels of immigration led to a mismatch between supply and demand, and, since 2013, a huge spike in home prices, according to Koster.
By 2025, the Netherlands was facing a "significant housing challenge," according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, marked by low housing supply that has been "slow to respond to rising demand."
The Dutch government in 2024 set a goal of building 100,000 new homes per year, but has so far failed to meet it. In 2025, 80,000 new homes were built in the country. The shortage is making it difficult for young people and first-time homebuyers.
The extent of the problem was such that 56% of voters called housing a top priority before the October elections, beating immigration and healthcare, according to polling by EenVandaag, a Dutch television program.
Some of the biggest obstacles to building new housing in the Netherlands are the country's strict zoning rules that make it difficult to build in cities, a congested electricity grid that can’t handle more homes and restrictive nitrogen pollution rules that make it hard to situate new homes in rural areas, experts say.
But part of D66's success during the campaign was turning a mind-numbingly complex policy problem into something that voters could easily understand.
"If you talk about addressing housing affordability issues, you typically have to talk about quite technical issues such as rent control, building procedures, zoning — and that's not very effective for people to vote on," said Koster.
D66's trademark proposal was to build 10 new cities across the Netherlands. They even proposed building a new city, dubbed IJstad, literally on the waters outside Amsterdam.
That said, many experts said that building 10 brand new cities wasn't realistic. And D66, now leading a minority coalition government, has moderated its housing policy proposals. Prime Minister Jetten is now calling for 30 new major home building sites across the country, rather than entirely new cities.
Still, the challenge of actually building housing is why "a lot of parties don’t want to burn their fingers on this issue," said Ruben Cober, a European political analyst from the Netherlands.
But that is not keeping a growing number of parties — and the European institutions — from trying.
The EU takes on housing
In December 2025, the European Commission launched its Affordable Housing Plan, with a focus on boosting supply by supporting the building of 650,000 new homes each year across the continent. Denmark's Dan Jørgensen was made the EU's first-ever Commissioner for Housing, while the European Parliament put together a Special Committee on the Housing Crisis.
"Everyone thinks that housing is just a problem in their country, but that’s not true at all," said MEP Vicent Marzà (Greens/EFA, ES), a vice chair of the Parliament's Special Committee on the Housing Crisis. "This is a European problem. We are experiencing these increases all across Europe."
But MEPs across the political spectrum have different approaches to dealing with the housing crisis.
Center and right-leaning members of the Parliament's housing committee are pushing for supply-side fixes to speed up construction, while groups further to the left want more muscular government intervention.
While there's already an EU law in place to regulate short-term rentals, Marzà's Greens/EFA group is also pushing for EU-wide requirements that citizens not spend more than 30% of their disposable income on housing and limits on the purchase of homes for investment purposes.
Whatever shape EU-level housing legislation ultimately takes, it is clearly fast becoming a key policy issue for politicians across Europe.
As D66 member Robin van Leijen, who was recently elected to the Dutch parliament, put it: "If you're a social liberal and you believe people should live their lives and make their own choices, you should focus on housing. It's that simple. It's a precondition for all other freedoms."
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