Affordable Housing

International Tenants´ Day  -  UN World Habitat Day
(first Monday in October, every year)

The International Tenants´ day was designated in 1986 by the IUT Assembly in Paris. The day was chosen as a follow up of the UN World Habitat Day that had been designated the previous year, 1985, by the UN General Assembly.

Affordable housing is the theme of 2002
The percentage of affordable housing is decreasing in most countries around the world and low- and medium income households have great difficulties in finding accommodation. Key workers as teachers, nurses, police and employees in the service sector can not find affordable housing at a reasonable distance from their workplace.

The government in London, for example, has now been forced to launch a new program for the construction of thousands of new flats with subsidised rents in order to keep key-workers.

Figures show that market rents make it impossible for ordinary employees, key workers, to live in more central areas of many cities.

Oslo, Norway
A normal rent in Oslo is about 1200 €. A secondary school teacher or a policeman in Oslo earns about 3270 € , 37 % goes to paying the rent. A nurse earns about 2900 € and pays 41 % for rent. A salesperson who earns only 2500 € pays 48 % of her/his income in rental costs. 

London, England
An average rent is 1580 €. A nurse earns about 2290 € and pays 69 % of the income as rent.
A fireman earns 2400 € and would have to pay 66 % of his income before tax if he would live in central London. A teacher and a policeman earn about 3450 € and would pay 45 % of his pre-tax income for rent.
85,000 Londoners cannot afford their mortgage payments. Over 50,000 households in London live in temporary accommodation

New York, USA
A normal market rent of about 2400 € would force a nurse, who earns 4500 €, to pay 53 % of her income for rent, a teacher who earns 3500 € would pay 68 % of his salary for rent.
Since 1996 200 000 units of affordable housing have been lost in the USA. 1,6 million tenants face increasing insecurity, as their rental agreements are about to expire. 

Eastern Europe
The situation is perhaps even worse in Hungary, Estonia, Romania and Albania. Restitution and privatisation have almost eradicated any rental- social and affordable housing. Only 5 % of rental housing remain in Budapest and Tallinn, 3 % in Bucharest and 2 % in Tirana. Homelessness, prostitution and street children are visible results of short-term governmental policies to adapt state budgets for a prospective membership of the EU.

(All figures show salaries in Euro before tax, rents per month, ~75 m2)

Additional statistics about rental housing on www.iut.nu - facts & figures