Catalonia leads the affordable housing needs in Spain: there are 226,000 homes missing and 761,000 throughout the State, a basic pillar to meet the needs of 1.7 million families (400,000 in Catalonia) at risk of residential exclusion because they dedicate more than 30% of their income to pay rent, according to a study carried out by the real estate agency Culmia. The problem, however, is not unaffordable if the political will is reflected in the budgets: 6.1 billion euros per year would solve the problem in a decade.
Francisco Pérez, CEO of the company, recalled that in Spain there is a need for emergency housing (free for extreme situations such as evictions or domestic violence), social housing (for people who can pay less than 300 euros in rent) and affordable housing, with rents from 600 to 800 euros per month. “The private sector could make rentals affordable, only if the administration provided us with land,” he said.
According to data from the real estate company, the public investment necessary to build the 1.7 million homes needed to solve the residential problem in Spain would be 61,000 million euros: 25,000 million to build 442,000 social homes and for housing emergency situations. ; 26.5 billion to build 761,000 affordable rental homes, and 7.7 billion to grant aid that allows access to property, for 486,000 homes. “People who can buy with help free up rental housing for other people,” Pérez recalled. These aids also contribute to the sustainability of the pension system. “With housing paid for, a family can live with a pension of 1,000 euros. If you live renting, no.”
In Catalonia, for its part, the investment required to build the 400,000 homes needed would be 7.4 billion euros: 4,000 million to build 68,000 public rental homes; 1,010 million for 225,000 affordable rental homes, and 2,380 million to provide aid that facilitates access to property.
The Culmia study foresees that affordable housing will be built by private companies, such as Culmia itself, which is building 3,000 homes in the community of Madrid. For this reason, public investment of 26.5 billion euros would make it possible to mobilize a total investment of 108 billion in the construction of the planned 761,000 homes, which would cost an average of 142,000 euros each.
Pérez recalled that the public investment needed to solve the housing problem in Spain is not disproportionate. "In a 10-year plan we are talking about 6.6 billion annually, when the ministry's current budget is already 4 billion." In the case of Catalonia, the real estate company points out, the difference is even smaller: 740 million would be needed annually, and the Generalitat's budget already dedicates 940 million to housing but is only capable of building, with its own promotion, less than 1,000 homes per year. anus.
Celso Gómez, director of analysis and strategy at Culmia, regretted that the Generalitat's housing spending has gone from 2.5% of GDP in 2006 to 1.8% of its budget in 2022, precisely at a time when it has the difficulty of accessing housing has worsened. According to their study, however, the main problem facing Catalonia is the lack of land: there is only urbanized land to build 3,000 affordable rental homes in Barcelona and 30,000 in the metropolitan area, and it is also concentrated in peripheral areas where there is less. demand pressure. This represents a total deficit of 186,000 homes.
To solve this, Gómez proposed optimizing taxation to increase the economic attractiveness of projects and changes in urban planning policy, especially speeding up the development of sectors to quickly increase the number of homes to be built and promote urban regeneration plans, with changes of land use, as well as increasing the density of new sectors.
