Housing for Millions without New Buildings?

Researchers from the Europa-Universität Flensburg and the Wuppertal Institute have analysed how many people in the EU could find housing through more efficient use of existing under-occupied buildings: According to the analysis, the theoretical potential lies at around 100 million people – almost a quarter of the EU population. The researchers report this in their paper "Housing for millions without new buildings? An analysis of the theoretical housing potential of under-occupied dwellings in the European building stock", which was recently published in the journal "Environmental Research Letters". In order to realise this potential, the existing under-occupancy of many dwellings would have to be reduced: If the housing situation changes, for example due to children moving out, people would have to move from under-occupied dwellings into smaller accommodations, take in additional occupants or divide the dwelling into smaller units.

The calculations are based on occupancy standards of Swiss co-operatives and municipal housing authorities, according to which the number of rooms – in simplified terms – may only exceed the number of residents by one or two rooms. This regulation is colloquially known in Switzerland as the "room rule" (German: "Zimmerregel"). It served the researchers as a tried-and-tested, comparatively widely accepted upper limit for needs-based housing. By combining the room rule with data from EU statistics on income and living conditions, the researchers found a theoretical housing potential of around 152 million rooms in the EU's building stock. Converted into three-room flats, this would be around 50 million additional dwellings – or living space for 100 million people, which corresponds to 23 per cent of the entire EU population.

"This is a theoretical value that we have calculated without factoring in technical, social or economic feasibility. That's why we describe it as theoretical housing potential in our paper," explains Johannes Thema, Senior Researcher in the Energy Policy Research Unit at the Wuppertal Institute and co-author of the study. The potential for more living space and environmental protection is nevertheless enormous, according to the lead author of the study, Jonas Lage from Flensburg University: "Regulations such as the Swiss room rule could effectively alleviate the housing shortage even without large numbers of new buildings. At the same time, this would also reduce the enormous emissions, resource consumption, waste production and soil sealing caused by new buildings." The construction sector in the EU is responsible for five to twelve per cent of CO2 emissions, around half of all raw materials extracted in the EU and more than a third of waste generation.

The paper has been published in open access and can be downloaded free of charge via the link below.