MIL-OSI Europe: Written question – Explosive issue of housing – E-001940/2024

Question for written answer  E-001940/2024
to the Commission
Rule 144
Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos (NI)

For thousands of working people and their families, housing is an explosive issue. In Greece, 74.2% of tenants spend more than 40% of their income on accommodation, while 74% of young people are still living ‘with Mum and Dad’. The price of buying a house has also gone up enormously, by 66.4% as compared to 2017, as also reflected in data from the Bank of Greece.

In view of the above:

• 1.What is the Commission’s view of the demand for no auctioning of social housing or of business premises for the self-employed, as expressed in the ongoing mass mobilisations that have stopped working-class properties going under the hammer and ordinary families, often including even members with disabilities, unemployed people, etc. being turned out of their houses?
• 2.What does it think of the fact that the ‘My Home 2’ and ‘Upgrading My Home’ programmes financed by the RRF (Recovery and Resilience Facility), using money that comes out of the heavy taxes paid by ordinary people, are in practice a burden on working-class households with loans, producing a further skyrocketing of prices in the real-estate construction, operation and management sectors, the building materials industry and the banking sector, and boosting the profitability of their business groups?
• 3.What is its view regarding the need for integrated housing planning under the responsibility of the state, aimed at meeting the needs of working people and involving the re-establishment of ΟΕΚ (the Greek Workers’ Housing Organisation) and support for an exclusively state-run construction programme, a ban on the auctioning-off of social housing, an upgrading and expansion of student halls of residence and the use of apartments and hotels for free accommodation for students?

Submitted: 3.10.2024