Too many houses, not enough flats

The capital urgently needs to revise its entire housing policy, city councillor Elsa Berg said at a recent council meeting.

“We need to move away from building large houses and start focusing on building flats instead,” she said.

“We have a great housing shortage, and yet we continue to build like we always have – large houses. We simply don’t get enough dwelling places per square metre of land.”

 >> SEE ALSO Flats now more popular than houses

Not only are the large houses expensive to buy, she adds; they also present problems for sellers.

“It is becoming increasingly popular for parents to downsize their long-time family home into a flat once the children move out,” she says.

“But with so few flats, it is difficult for these parents to find anything smaller than what they already have.”

A city built like a village

Berg believes that Tórshavn is built like a village but has now grown into a city.

“This is something we need to take into account,” she says.

“The demand for living in the city is skyrocketing, but if we continue to expand the city with large houses, we will soon run out of building space in the capital.”

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.