Housing across South-Eastern and Central-Eastern Europe is in crisis:
- Housing is almost entirely left to market forces, but many households do not have the necessary capital to acquire an apartment nor qualify for a mortgage.
- Households struggle to cover basic housing expenses, with the result that they are under threat of disconnection from utilities (heating, electricity, etc.), and may even be threatened with eviction.
- Many people are unable to afford their own apartment. Particularly for young people, this leads to an unhealthy dependence on older generations, increasing the existing pressures that cause many to leave the country.
Across the region, new co-operative housing developments are being explored by pioneering groups. They respond to this housing emergency – unaffordability, speculation, negligible amount of social housing – and now take the lead in reinventing affordability of housing from the bottom up.