How housing became the key to winning elections in the West

"Zohran Mamdani has just become mayor of New York City with a powerful central message: facilitating access to affordable housing, a pipe dream these days. His main promise is to freeze the rent in in rent-stabilized apartments, in a city where $2,000-a-month leases (1,800) have been a thing of the past for yearstoday they average around $3,000and where the high cost of living affects even families with salaries that would be eye-watering in virtually any other part of the West."

"Less than a week before the left's victory in the cradle of capitalism, a progressive but much more moderate political party, D66, won elections in the Netherlands with the same promise: to alleviate the housing bottleneck. Every pig in this country has a roof over their head, but a student or a young person can't even find an affordable broom closet, the future Dutch prime minister, Rob Jetten, graphically stated during the campaign."

"The housing issue has also recently been championed by Ireland's newly elected president, Catherine Connolly, whose success was even more resounding: she garnered 63% of the votes, more than half a million ahead of her closest rival, and with a particularly high voter turnout among younger generations, weary of wages that are insufficientespecially in Dublinand to whom the new head of state has consistently appealed."

Mayoral and national elections across Western countries show housing affordability as a central political issue. Candidates promise measures such as rent freezes in rent-stabilized apartments amid rapidly rising rents. Political victories in the Netherlands and Ireland emphasize voter concern over housing accessibility for young people and workers. High turnout among younger generations reflects frustration with wages that fail to keep pace with living costs. International observers identify an extreme affordability crisis concentrated on the working population, compounded by perceived wealth inequality and insufficient governmental responses to alleviate housing shortages.

Read at english.elpais.com