Dr. Orna Rosenfeld B.Arch. (Hons) M.A. Ph.D., award-winning urban strategist, author, and Global Advisor on housing, Research Scientist and Author

An Interview.
By Karin Zauner. 
Co-Founder of Housing4Europe.Org

Q: You worked as a housing expert in the EU Urban Agenda – Housing Partnership. In the final document, the “Action Plan”, the term ‘affordable housing’ is defined in the so-called housing continuum. Could you please describe the housing continuum.

Orna Rosenfeld
Housing systems in the European Union are rich and diverse, and the EU Urban Agenda Housing Partnership reflected that wealth. However, diversity also means that the terms such as ‘affordable housing’ can be interpreted in many different ways. The concept of ‘affordable housing’ was central to the EU Urban Agenda Partnership on Housing. The Partnership aimed “ensuring an adequate supply of good quality affordable housing across the European Member States’’.

However, I noticed early on that the Partners had very different interpretations of the term ‘affordable housing’. For some, ‘affordable housing’ was just a synonym for their traditional ‘social housing’; for others, it meant rental housing cheaper than the market but more expensive than social housing. For a number of partners, the term ‘affordable housing’ evoked complex discussions about the potential measurements of affordability and what that may mean and for whom. This complexity and diversity needed to be addressed to provide a robust action plan and unite the partners behind their common goal.

As an advisor for the European Commission and the Housing Partnership, it was essential to find and devise a solution that would accommodate that diversity and richness rather than hinder it. In other words, I was looking for a theoretical framework that could embrace all Partners’ interpretations of the term ‘affordable and ensure unity without uniformity and diversity without fragmentation. Another important point to me as a scientist and a practitioner was to make sure that whatever framework is adopted, the wealth of real-life affordable housing solutions behind various interpretations have their rightful place.

So, I started by interviewing the partners about their interpretations of the term ‘affordable housing’ and analysed their responses. This analysis led me to adopt the ‘housing continuum’ as a unifying concept that I later modified to serve the interpretations of the EU Urban Agenda Housing Partnership members.

The Housing continuum presents a range of housing options from emergency housing to various types of affordable housing (i.e. subsidised or otherwise state-supported housing) and market housing.
The advantage of the housing continuum is that it could be populated with various housing tenures, from the emergency shelters on one extreme to homeownership on the other. This also means that different affordable housing solutions and interpretations put forward by the Partnership members (as well as in the EU member states more broadly) could find their rightful place. This is important not only as a conceptual solution but also to encourage the continued provision of varied housing options and solutions to respond to the diverse housing needs.

Q: How would you define affordable housing?

Orna Rosenfeld
Clearly, there are many ways to define ‘affordable housing’. What is much less often discussed is how and when the term emerged and what it meant originally.

Twenty years ago, there was no debate about what ‘affordable housing’ meant simply because the term was not used. Social housing was built to provide cheaper housing to those who were not able to afford the market price. The discussion about affordable housing started in the USA with the neoliberal policies advocating against investment in public housing and following disinvestment in social housing in line with Thatcher’s housing-related policies in the United Kingdom. Therefore, in its original meaning in the native English speaking countries – the UK and USA, affordable housing meant broadly rental housing that received less funding from the state than social or public housing. It referred to rental housing tenure that was cheaper than market housing but more expensive to rent than the public or social accommodation in the same market.
The discussion about the meaning of the term ‘affordable housing’ in Europe picked up in recent years and became more prominent after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. The Global Financial Crisis led to the diversification of the housing need and a need for diverse, affordable housing solutions.

In terms of a definition per se, I support and stand by the conclusions we collectively arrived at in the EU Urban Agenda Housing Partnership.

Q: What are the main reasons for Europe’s housing crisis you identified in your research?

Orna Rosenfeld
That is a question that requires quite complex and potentially lengthy repose. I will try to provide some key general points for your readers here. My research into the housing crisis began right after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. That crisis presented a turning point in housing in Europe, even though the problem did not start on our continent. Since the Global Financial Cris