This article proposes to employ taxonomic methods to assess the residential situation in selected countries of the European Union. A synthetic measure was used whose construction was based on diagnostic variables which characterise the housing and socioeconomic conditions in the countries included in the study. This measure made it possible to arrange the items under study in a linear manner by residential situation (from the best to the worst). In addition, Ward's method of classification was

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... sed to arrange countries in groups with similar residential situations. Similar results were obtained in both classifications for the years 2007 and 2013. The proposed procedure can be used by state authorities to make housing policy decisions.