Europe’s housing crisis: Portugal, Turkey, and Luxembourg struggle to find solutions

In Portugal, the homeownership rate among young people has plummeted by 50% over two generations.

While 55% of those born between 1977 and 1986 owned homes by the age of 25, just over a quarter of those born after 1997 have managed to do so.

This decline can be attributed to a real estate crisis, resulting in an 8.7% surge in house prices prices over the past decade.

Despite Portugal's relatively high homeownership rate of 70%, it's primarily driven by older generations, leaving the younger population struggling to afford homes.

Citizens are calling for the government to implement measures such as financial assistance for first-time buyers, the construction of more affordable housing and building up derelict areas.

Rent hikes in Turkey have become so steep in the past year that they have led to violence between landlords and tenants, with the media reporting 11 deaths and 46 injuries.

Rents have soared by an average of 121% over the past year, and in big cities such as Ankara and Istanbul, they have surged by as much as 188 %.

This is due to many factors, including a cost-of-living crisis, high inflation, and an influx of displaced people from the devastating earthquake that struck the country in February.

The government has capped property rent increases at 25% for households, and aligned them with the official inflation rate for businesses.

However, experts say the measures have only heightened tensions, prompting many landlords to use any means - including illegal ones - to evict tenants and find new ones ready to pay higher prices.

Around 47,000 eviction trials and 100,000 others concerning illegal rent increases opened in the first six months of this year, more than double in the same period of 2022, according to Turkish