Judging by numerous institutional reports and media headlines, many European countries are facing one of the most severe housing affordability crises in half a century. The surge in inflation from mid-2021 through early 2024 has sharply raised housing costs and, together with other developments in urban housing, worsened affordability for renters, owners repaying the mortgage, as well as new home buyers. This has renewed the interest of policymakers in affordability analysis, which has long been a niche for scholars specialising in housing markets, social policy, urban economics, and, more recently, economic geography. 

The concept of affordable housing traditionally recognises the need of low-income households to access appropriate housing in the market meeting their other basic living costs. Deteriorating housing affordability for this group could result in rising public spending, straining the budgets already allocated to other vulnerable groups in society, who have no choice but to rely on the public sector to provide housing. In recent years, however, the concept of affordable housing has also been extended to housing costs and accessibility of home ownership in general, including for younger families, first-time homebuyers, as well as middle-income households. Currently used measures of housing affordability, mainly designed for low-income households, often confirm that affordability for some of these groups has deteriorated. These contested understandings of the concept have led to lively and often confusing debates among government officials, scholars, industry analysts, and media.