Housing crises are not just an American issue. Canada, European Union nations, the UK and others all face similar problems.
In particular, too few homes are being built to meet the demands of growing populations. And that's leading to sharp increases in housing costs for renters and new homeowners alike. In other words, "It's affordability, stupid!"
"If the price of eggs had risen at the same rate as the price of [UK] housing land, a dozen eggs would have cost £91.28 [about $120] by 2008," said Professor Paul Cheshire of the London School of Economics (LSE) in a report he co-authored last year.
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An Exception in Japan
The stand-out exception is Japan. In 2023, it had more than 9 million "akiyas" (vacant homes), some of which were listed for less than $10,000, according to a CNBC report last year.
Much of this is a result of Japan's changing demographics. The death rate far exceeds the birth rate, and its population is shrinking — by -0.43% in 2024, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
"One of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, Japan is looking to immigration to address increased labor shortages — albeit slowly and largely without public debate," continues the institute.
United Kingdom
In many ways, the UK's economy most resembles America's. As Reaganomics reformed America and promoted a strong private sector and weak government, Thatcherism was doing the same in Britain.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave every social housing tenant the right to buy their home at a discount, provided they'd lived in it for at least three years. The longer they'd lived in the property, the bigger the discount, and "By 1988, the average discount was 44%; the maximum was 70%," says The Week.
Two problems arose over the years. First, local authorities were prevented from spending most of the money raised to build new social housing stock, reducing inventory by 1.1 million over less than 20 years. Last year, 1.2 million Britons were on waiting lists for social housing.
And, secondly, many tenants who bought their homes ended up selling them, often to private landlords. Thatcher's reform saw the UK homeownership rate soar to 71% in 2003, but by last year it was back to about 65%.
Just as in the U.S., much of Britain's housing crisis is down to NIMBYism ("not-in-my-backyard") enabled through the planning (zoning) system. High costs are "the economic reality of a restrictive, discretionary planning system," says Cheshire. And his LSE co-author, Professor Christian Hilber, concurs: "Real reform requires both a rules-based system of planning and a system that embodies a proper understanding of basic economic analysis."
European Union
"Over half (51%) of city residents consider the ‘lack of affordable housing’ an urgent and immediate problem," says a multi-national poll conducted by the European Union.
Meanwhile, the Nuffield Policy Research Center (part of the University of Oxford) says, "Over the past forty years, social housing in Europe has sharply declined, despite its historic role in providing affordable homes for low- and middle-income residents. ... four obstacles loom: anti-immigrant sentiment, restrictive means testing, high construction and land costs, and local resistance to density."
Immigration
The United States and all the developed nations with housing crises are dealing with a similar problem. That is that their own citizens are reproducing too slowly to maintain population levels.
We recently quoted a 2025 NPR article: "The total fertility rate ... measures how many babies, on average, each woman will have over her lifetime. And for a population to remain stable - flat, no growth, no decline - women, on average, have to have 2.1 kids. In the U.S., that number is 1.6, and dropping."
A shrinking population means a shrinking workforce and an expanding pool of retirees relying on employees to fund their social security payments. It also leads to labor shortages in critical industries and falls in gross domestic product.
That is why all the countries with housing crises like ours are allowing high rates of immigration — and why Japan is at last, slowly and quietly, increasing the rate at which it accepts immigrants.
While immigration is the key to economic growth during population declines, it's also driving up housing costs. It's the tricky job of governments to balance forces in the economy.
Solutions
A common theme across all the reports we've read for this article has been a need to restructure zoning and planning processes to allow higher-density housing in places where people want to live. Right now, local authorities tend to pander to the whims of local homeowners, who'd prefer nothing to change and who are especially influential because they tend to vote in elections.
That applies across all countries, including the U.S. New homes must be built where people want to live, which is often close to job opportunities and existing housing.
When the government proposed selling federal land for housing development, the idea quietly died. The land was mostly located in Alaska and the Western states, where housing stocks already largely meet demand. Getting people to move to those markets without first creating attractive jobs would be a tough sell.
To fix housing crises, we have to get used to allowing more high-density, affordable housing in neighborhoods, especially near city centers, perhaps including manufactured homes, apartment buildings, tiny homes and other forms of housing that are currently widely shunned.
