When Noor, a 28-year-old nurse in Amsterdam, was finally offered a full-time position at the University hospital of the University of Amsterdam, she should have been thrilled. Instead, she cried. The job was a dream — but rent for a one-bedroom flat would eat nearly 70% of her pay cheque. To make it work, Noor would have to keep her second job as a waitress and endure a constant lack of sleep. “It feels like the city doesn’t want me here,” she said. Noor’s story is completely invented, but it would not be an anomaly. Across the globe, in London and Berlin, Sydney and Seoul, Dubai and Amsterdam, the same quiet despair is spreading. Housing — once the cornerstone of stability and opportunity — has become a source of exclusion, anxiety, and anger.

Cities, once celebrated as engines of social mobility, now actively push out the very workers who make them function. The housing affordability crisis is not merely a social problem. It is existential. Without affordable shelter, cities cannot remain centres of creativity, dynamism, or democracy. Yet political leaders still treat the crisis as if it were a side issue, something to be managed with tax credits or zoning tweaks. The reality is harsher: unless the structure of urban land and finance is changed, the urban dream will continue to collapse.

The Political Earthquake Underway

Voters around the world have made their frustration unmistakably clear.

• In Canada’s 2021 federal election, 84% of voters ranked housing affordability as a top issue, according to Nanos Research. In the elections of this week, housing remained a key priority – only overshadowed by Donald Trump’s tariffs and his desire to make Canada a US State.
• In South Korea’s 2022 presidential race, it became the decisive factor, especially among younger voters crushed by Seoul’s astronomical housing prices.
• London’s 2024 mayoral election saw housing concerns surpass crime and transportation, the perennial favourites, in YouGov’s voter surveys.

And it’s not just the usual suspects:

• In Australia, polls showed that housing costs rivalled healthcare and education as leading concerns.
• In the Netherlands, housing was cited as a bigger worry than climate change.
• In Germany, Berliners backed radical proposals to expropriate major landlords — once unthinkable in a city still scarred by memories of authoritarianism.

Across ideologies and nations, the common thread is unmistakable: people no longer believe that hard work will guarantee them a place to live. Housing is no longer a ladder to security — it’s a wall.

Why Housing Affordability Is the Most Critical Issue

Housing is different from other urban challenges because it underpins everything else. Without affordable homes, public health suffers. Overcrowded flats become breeding grounds for disease, and unstable living conditions drive up rates of mental illness and family stress. Economic opportunity shrinks when people like Noor are pushed into long, punishing commutes or forced to abandon promising careers altogether. Environmental goals, too, are undermined. When city cores become unaffordable, sprawl accelerates, forcing more people into long car commutes and increasing carbon emissions. And politically, the consequences are dire. As more people feel locked out of basic urban life, resentment builds. Trust in institutions erodes. Populism and extremism, always lurking at the edges of political life, find fertile ground.

If a city cannot offer affordable housing, it cannot offer hope. And without hope, cities cease to be engines of progress and become battlegrounds of disillusionment.

Moving Beyond Cosmetic Solutions

Despite the urgency, mainstream political responses have been timid. Cities offer density bonuses to developers, throw tax breaks at first-time buyers, or allow a handful of duplexes where single-family homes once stood. These are not solutions. They are palliatives — temporary salves for a deep, systemic wound. Real solutions require structural change: interventions that reshape the very way land, finance, and ownership function in urban life.

One approach would be the creation of publicly owned, non-profit mortgage banks. Rather than subsidizing private lenders, governments could offer at-cost mortgages tied directly to borrowers’ incomes. When a homeowner sells their property at a profit, a portion of that gain would automatically be recycled back into the public mortgage fund, creating a self-renewing source of affordable credit. This would challenge the banking system’s grip over housing finance and ensure that the gains from urban growth flow back to future generations — not just to the lucky or the well-connected.

Another radical but necessary shift would be to separate land ownership from building ownership. In new developments and major redevelopments, the land itself would remain publicly or collectively owned — through municipal trusts or community foundations — while buildings could be privately owned or leased. This model would strip speculation out of the system. Developers would no longer bid against each other for skyrocketing land parcels, and homeowners would no longer treat real estate as a speculative lottery ticket. Instead, the cost of housing would reflect the real value of construction and maintenance, not the casino of land price escalation. This approach is not without precedent. In Hong Kong, all land technically belongs to the government and is leased out on long-term contracts. In Oxford and Cambridge, much of the city property is owned by colleges and leased to individuals. What is new is the idea of deploying this structure systematically — and explicitly — to fight unaffordability.

Finally, cities must tear down the bureaucratic barriers that block the rapid reuse of empty spaces. Vast areas of cities are filled with dead malls, half-empty office towers, and oversized single-family homes whose owners cling to zoning restrictions that no longer make sense. Instead of waiting years for rezoning approvals, cities should introduce wildcard rights: any building that sits more than 70% empty for two consecutive years would automatically become eligible for residential conversion, subject only to basic safety standards. Property owners could no longer simply sit on empty assets and wait for speculative gains while housing shortages rage. Imagine if that crumbling shopping centre on the edge of town could become a vibrant mix of affordable flats, studios, and cafés within months, not decades. Imagine if an abandoned office tower became student housing with minimal red tape. Adaptive reuse at scale could transform dead urban space into living communities — fast.

A Choice Cities Must Make

None of these solutions are easy. They will anger vested interests: banks, developers, landowners. They will challenge deeply ingrained ideologies about property, wealth, and the “free market.” But they are necessary. Housing unaffordability is not an accident of history. It is the result of policy choices — choices that prioritized speculation over stability, profit over people. If cities continue down this path, they will become ever more exclusive, brittle, and divided.

But another future is still possible. A future where land is treated as a public trust, where finance serves human need, and where dead space is reborn as living communities. A future where Noor, and millions like her, can live close to the work they love without sacrificing their health, their families, or their dreams and make cities better.