For many residents in Germany, the search for suitable and affordable housing is becoming increasingly challenging. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), which released the latest results from the EU-SILC survey on income and living conditions, 11.7% of the population lived in overcrowded housing units as of 2025. This figure marks a continuous increase in overcrowding over the past five years; in 2020, only 10.2% of people encountered housing with insufficient space.
Analysis of the data highlights several groups disproportionately affected by cramped living conditions. Foreign nationals aged 18 and over are a particularly vulnerable demographic, with 30.8% residing in overcrowded housing. This rate is nearly five times higher than the rate among German citizens, which stood at 6.7%. Furthermore, individuals at risk of poverty also constitute a significantly affected group, at 27.4%.
Housing strain is also strongly tied to family structure. People living in households with children were above average in 2025, with 17.6% affected. Conversely, those in childless households reported a rate below the average at 7.2%. Within the group with children, the most severely impacted were two adults with at least three children (32.1%), followed closely by single parents and their children (29.6%). Where households have no children, two-adult households reported the lowest rate of overcrowding at 3.3%, though the proportion of single individuals remained substantially higher at 12.6%. The EU-SILC defines overcrowding for a single-person household as lacking at least two rooms, which implies a separation between living and sleeping areas.
Examining the population by age reveals that children and young adults are most prone to inadequate housing. Among those under 18, the rate of living in units with too few rooms was 19.0%. In contrast, the demographic aged 65 and older was the least affected, with a rate of 3.1%.
The data also clearly shows that the housing shortage is most acute in urban areas. For instance, the proportion of people in overcrowded units was considerably higher in major cities (16.9%) compared to suburbs and smaller towns (9.6%), and was three times higher than the rate observed in rural areas (5.5%).
When comparing Germany to international standards, the overcrowding rate remains localized. The average rate across the European Union in 2025 was 16.8%, thus higher than Germany’s rate of 11.7%. The countries reporting the highest rates were Romania (40.4%) and Latvia (38.9%), while Cyprus (2.2%) and the Netherlands (4.1%) reported the lowest rates.
