Affordable Housing for Young Adults in Latvia

The topic is related to the need for housing as a social need for every member of society and its inaccessibility, mainly due to lack of finance. Housing affordability is a concept that indicates whether households are able to purchase or rent a home, maintain it and cover other non-housing expenses. Housing is one of the most important basic human values, but in the housing market, young households, whose incomes tend to be lower and more volatile, often face difficulties in finding affordable housing. For this reason, young adults are often considered high-risk tenants. Uncertainty in the rental market, restrictions on buying a home, and financial difficulties have a significant impact on young people’s ability to buy or rent their own home and often lead to short-term renting and regular housing changes. Various events that have a significant impact on the national economy, e.g., the financial crisis, have affected all the population in different countries over time, but it is believed that these events have had the most significant impact on young people’s living standards and on the level of housing affordability for youth. Therefore, it has been decided to evaluate the economic situation in the European Union, to analyse the socio-economic indicators for young people aged 20 to 34 years, and to study the concept of housing affordability both in Latvia and in the EU. The goal of the research is to analyse the possibilities of increasing the housing affordability for youth.