Housing in times of scarcity – Towards a renovated housing policy

Housing becomes ever more expensive for buyers as well as for renters. Johan Albrecht and Rob Van Hoofstat show – in a new Itinera Institute study – that the demand for new houses increases every year while construction of new buildings decreases. The tension on the housing market rises and it affects housing prices.

Urgent measures need to be adopted in order to improve the affordability on the buying and rental markets. Those need to insure an increase in the housing supply while improving accessibility of the lowest revenues on the rental market.

Itinera proposes that only rent subsidies coupled to new incentives for building new houses can offer a budgetary answer against the tensions on housing markets. The model of social housing is 4 to 5 times more expensive and has the very same results. Hence it is budgetary unsustainable.