This brief is organised into three parts: Section 1outlines the range of metrics to assess housing affordability and identifies key housing outcomes and drivers of an increasingly tight housing market. Section 2 provides a preliminary assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on housing affordability, as well an inventory of the different emergency housing support measures that were put in place by public authorities at the outset of the pandemic. Section 3sets out a series of recommendations for governments to make housing more affordable, including strategies to (i) increase the supply of affordable and social housing; (ii) improve targeting of public support for housing; (iii) make the private rental market more affordable; and (iv) navigate the challenging road to recovery that lies ahead.