Anyone living in Luxembourg knows that housing is a national headache, but the roots of the crisis run deeper than most headlines suggest. Gaël Arellano, RTL Infos journalist and housing specialist, explained on RTL Today Radio that the problem goes far beyond his infamous 'VEFA nightmares' – cases where buyers are left in limbo by stalled off-plan projects.
"VEFA nightmares are when it really goes all the way and these people have been in those situations for years, you know", Arellano said.
He continued:
But today, of course, we have a market that is completely blocked on VEFA. I think the latest numbers were around 300 sales and 90 or 80% of that would be the state buying projects, so people are not buying new homes, we're not constructing new homes in Luxembourg. That's a huge problem with the demand rising.
Arellano drew attention to the fact that, according to figures from the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (STATEC), 8,000 to 10,000 people are moving to the Grand Duchy every year, which further increases pressure on the market: "Logically, if you're not building those houses, what happens? The prices go up. And right now, since the prices can't go up anymore because nobody's buying, the rent is going up."
What is moving in the market, Arellano noted, is existing housing, because construction of new buildings has stalled.
Faced with this dire situation, a new alliance has taken shape: the Housing Crisis Collective (Kollektiv Logementskris).
Tom Rees, one of its organisers, traced the group's origins:
It started out in September, we had a press conference with five youth parties, and then from there three of us – the Young Left, the Young Social Democrats, and the Young Greens – We all decided that we have to do more, and then we organised ourselves with quite a few other youth organisations.
That initial spark quickly grew. On Friday evening, the Collective is mobilising for a second demonstration, where they will be joined by the Independent Luxembourg Trade Union Confederation (OGBL), the Luxembourg Christian Trade Union (LCGB), and Mouvement Ecologique.
"The wider civil society in Luxembourg are all supporting us", Rees said about the growing coalition.
What has changed to draw in such a diverse crowd?
Arellano believes the housing crunch is no longer limited to first-time buyers or renters: "Five to 10 years ago, there was a portion of our society that had that problem, that could not buy, that could not be in that situation. Now, kind of everybody is concerned."
He elaborated: "You have people that are 35, that are both working, they can't buy anymore because prices are so high, interest rates are so high, so now the whole of society is kind of concerned by that problem."
Recently, the Collective sat down with Claude Meisch, Minister for Housing, to present their demands. Tom described the meeting as "interesting, to say the least".
"We have our 20 demands, we had a press conference a couple days ago, where we introduced them", he recounted.
But the encounter left them wanting more:
He can give as many promises as he wants, but what we specifically asked for was timelines for when certain projects are going to be put in place. For example, the reform for the VEFA Law – we asked about that, couldn't give an answer. We asked about when there's finally going to be an empty housing registry, which we dearly need, because it's not just about building houses, it's about mobilising houses that already exist and are standing empty. That was introduced four years ago in the previous government and still not gone through Parliament. Just couldn't give us an answer when that's going to happen.
So, what exactly does the Housing Crisis Collective want?
Rees ran through some highlights:
One of the big ones is that we want to have at least 20% of housing in Luxembourg be affordable housing by 2035. And that kind of leads into our next demand, which is that we want the state to invest at least 1% of our GDP into affordable housing. The argument for that is that if we can invest 3, 3.5% into the military, which is what's happening now, then why not invest it into affordable housing, so that people can live and that people can have a roof over their head.
One major lesson from their meeting with the minister was the lack of joined-up thinking across government.
"There isn't enough coordination between the relevant ministries, when it comes to housing", Rees said. "One of the answers he gave quite often was, 'yeah, I can't say anything about that because I'm not the minister responsible'."
To address this, the Collective is calling for a national housing crisis commission to bring together all the relevant ministers and stakeholders.
The Collective is also inviting all residents to join the major demonstration at 6pm outside Galerie Lafayette, near Hamilius in Luxembourg City, on Friday 13 November.
Rees made a direct appeal: "The more people hit the streets, the more pressure we're going to put on the government to actually make a change."
