In 2026, a mounting housing crisis in Western nations has finally forced its way onto the agenda of some of the world’s richest governments.In the UK, a landmark renters’ rights law took effect in England and Wales on May 1, ending “no-fault” evictions in one of the country’s biggest private-rental reforms in decades.Across the Channel, the European Commission and Parliament have launched a new push on housing affordability, while in Washington, the United States Senate has advanced a rare bipartisan bill aimed at loosening barriers to new construction and expanding affordable housing supply.Experts say the lack of affordable housing is becoming a widespread problem in the Western world. From London to Toronto, Berlin to Sydney, as the rise in rents and home prices has outpaced wages, younger buyers are being locked out of ownership altogether, and governments are under growing pressure to decide whether housing should be treated primarily as a basic need or a financial asset.“In Canada, and in some other Western European countries, from the onset of neoliberalism, which really started to take hold in the late ’70s, early ’80s, it was chipping away [at public spending on housing],” Leilana Farha, global director of THE SHIFT, an international human rights organisation focused on housing, told Al Jazeera.“If there was an affordability crisis before the global financial crisis [of 2008], it was really for the lowest-income people. And that’s because the chipping away that neo …
