Trying to mitigate the affordable housing deficit in Barcelona is one of the great challenges that the government team that comes out of the elections this Sunday will have to tackle. The three-ingredient recipe launched this morning by the mayor of ERC, Ernest Maragall, and which must be cooked within a maximum period of one hundred days, includes the call for a summit with the economic sector, the Generalitat, the metropolitan area and social entities such as the PAH to promote the construction of floors.
The other two proposals pointed out by Maragall are the effective deployment in Barcelona of the law to contain rental prices and promoting that the land reserved for facilities be used for housing construction, a change of use that the law allows, he pointed. The Republican candidate considers that with this measure, during the first two years of the next term, the waiting list for the emergency housing table in Barcelona could be reduced to practically zero. The latest data published by the City Council indicate that, in the month of April, a total of 767 cases were handled and that another 695 families were pending the award of a flat.
ERC has promised that if it wins, it will lay the foundations to activate a total of 20,000 homes during the next term, at a rate of 5,000 per year, of which 8,000 are affordable rents. Maragall, accompanied by the number three of his candidacy, Ester Capella, and the Regional Minister of Territories of the Generalitat, Juli Fernández, made these statements at Casa Bloc, the innovative social project of five rationalist buildings promoted by the Generalitat. President Francesc Macià laid the first stone on March 13, 1933.
Maragall regretted yesterday the "inaction" of the government of the commons and the PSC. "To start up the housing factory we have to do the opposite of Colau, with his dogma and absolute reason," considered the mayor in the final stretch of the campaign.
