In a letter to the prime minister, the mayor said the housing crisis was an acute challenge. In a post on Facebook, Karacsony noted housing price and rent increases now outstripped growth in household incomes.

He said Budapest had proposals and specific schemes at the ready, worked out in cooperation with the staff of the European Commission and a government body, to ensure the provision of affordable rental accommodation and to convert underused publicly owned buildings into housing, which he called the biggest housing scheme of the past decades.

The 20 billion forint programme, he added, would be implemented once the government "finally publishes" the related tenders so that Budapest can access related EU funding.

"I am ready to negotiate ... in order to solve the housing crisis in Budapest," Karacsony said.

Fidesz councillor: Budapest suffering from housing crisis

Budapest is suffering from a housing crisis and the mayor of Budapest bears responsibility for it, Alexandra Szentkiralyi, Fidesz's group leader in the Budapest Assembly, said on Facebook on Tuesday.

In his manifesto five years ago, Gergely Karacsony promised to build subsidised housing and student dormitories, "and he had a series of other fake plans that came to nothing," Szentkiralyi said.

The "thousands of billions" spent in the city, she added, had yielded "zero affordable rentals or dorms", and the municipality's housing agency had only managed to rent out three flats.

"Karacsony and his team are trying to sweep their total housing failure under the carpet, but they are the ones leading this city. Naturally, they are expecting solutions from the government, and now that the government has had enough of their inactivity, City Hall has started to panic," she said.

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