There is a peculiar cruelty in telling young adults to dream big while arranging a world in which even a small private space feels out of reach. We celebrate ambition, then ask people to spend their best years calculating whether they can afford a deposit.
I do not think every protester in Europe carries the same grievance. No crowd does. But housing is one of the clearest places where a broader anxiety becomes visible. If a person works, studies and saves yet cannot picture an independent home, the problem is not a failure of imagination.
A future cannot be rented by the week
When housing is insecure, everything else becomes provisional. People delay families, change jobs less freely, or stay in arrangements that no longer suit them. The effects do not stop at the front door. They shape the kind of society we become.
Of course a home is not the only measure of a good life. I would never reduce joy to property. But stability gives people room to make choices. Without it, even optimism becomes expensive.
Listen to what the demand actually is
The young are not asking governments to hand them luxury. They are asking whether the rules will ever let effort meet opportunity. That is a fair question. It deserves more than a speech about resilience.
I want a Europe in which building a life is neither a privilege inherited from the past nor a fantasy postponed to some distant future. That would be a better answer to the streets than telling them to go home.
This column represents the author's view. It is separate from News Beast's automated, source-backed news reports.