The cost of housing is weighing more and more heavily on OECD households. In 2015, it monopolized 31% of their income, against 26% in 2005, according to a report published on June 14 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). A trend which should be exacerbated with the economic crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. The disadvantaged social categories are obviously the most affected and “Can hardly afford quality housing, and even less near employment areas”, points out this study “Which identifies the levers available to public authorities to improve the efficiency, inclusiveness and sustainability of housing markets”.
At issue: the rise in house prices and rents significantly faster than that of incomes over the last twenty years in most of the countries studied. While in 1985, it took an average of seven years’ wages for a couple with two children to buy a modest apartment in a capital, ten were needed in 2015. In France, for example, the real price of housing has almost doubled in twenty years (around + 90%). The largest increase is recorded in New Zealand (around 180%).
Result, “Housing costs absorb an increasing share of household income compared to other expenditure items such as health, education or transport”. Another symptom of the market imbalance, the housing overcrowding rate was reaching 15% in France among low-income households in 2019 (16% in the OECD). At the same time, the number of homeless was increasing in around a third of OECD members, including France, even before the pandemic.
“Public authorities must do more”
The massive decline in public investment in new housing construction is believed to be the main factor behind the supply shortages: over the past two decades, they have fallen by more than half on average in the OECD.
Faced with this observation, “Governments must do more to ensure universal access to affordable, quality and environmentally sustainable housing”, notes the study which recommends in particular to “Develop public investment in high energy efficiency social housing”. The organization recalls that the residential sector represents 17% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, 37% of fine particle emissions, and that 80% of the housing stock in the European Union was built before 1990. “Housing is much more than where you live, said Mathias Cormann, Secretary General of the OECD. It is the most important item in the household budget, and a key element of economic performance as well as well-being. “