Eurostat: overcrowding and high housing costs. Citizens in the EU with adequate or insufficient living space

17.5% of the EU population say they live in overcrowded households, with insufficient rooms for the number of occupants, or their family situation and ages. During the coronavirus lockdowns, the situation worsened and many found themselves working from home with children playing in the same room. Not to mention that overcrowded environments favour the spread of viruses. These data, released by the EU Statistical Office Eurostat today, provide a snapshot of the housing situation in Europe in 2020. The highest percentages of overcrowded households were registered in Romania (45.1%), Latvia (42.5%), Bulgaria (39.5%), Poland (36.9%), and Croatia (36.2%). By contrast, the most spacious and therefore least overcrowded households were in Cyprus (only 2.5% of Cypriots reported living in a too-small house), Ireland (3.2%), Malta (4.2%), and the Netherlands (4.8%). In Italy, it was 26.1% of the people who complained about inadequate living spaces. Housing costs were the largest economic burden (exceeding 40% of disposable income) for 7.8% of Europeans, with large disparities between countries. Housing costs were lower in 13 Member States (with Cyprus, Lithuania, Malta and Slovakia being the countries where people had to spend the least on housing), while it was in Greece that people were most burdened by excessive housing costs (33.3%), followed by Denmark (14.1%) and Bulgaria (14.4%). Italy was in the middle group, with 7.2% of people burdened by housing costs.
Valentina Bombelli