Editorial Ta Nea: The urgent need for affordable housing

Inexpensive and affordable housing in large cities has now become a dominant issue.

It is not simply a facet or a reflection of social mobility and the degree of its success.

It is an index of social cohesion and a precondition for the creation of new households.

To put it another way, we cannot ring the alarm bells regarding Greece’s low birth rate and demographic problem and not offer guarantees for the housing of new families or young couples.

On the other hand, the issue of housing and inexpensive homes is a necessary precondition and part of maintaining vibrant cities where the population is not dispersed in such a way that the city centre serves exclusively as a façade for tourism.

Today, with a difficult winter ahead of us, it is impermissible for the problem of the inability to find housing to be piled on to the already grave conditions created by the energy crisis and inflation.

The government, therefore, is working in the right direction in thrashing out a generous programme that includes subsidies, offering interest-free loans, undertaking various types of initiatives, and funding and exploiting available and unused structures so as to create the conditions for a solution of the housing problem.

High rent levels that have spread to almost areas and the often unfavourable terms for tenants – as well as the new reality of Airbnb – cannot be allowed to be a prohibitive factor for the mobility of young people and families.

The issue is of such great magnitude that aside from the government, opposition parties, from their own vantage point, have their own plans to present for affordable housing.