In housing policy, a great similarity and many differences. Paris and Barcelona share, like most large cities, the problem of a tense and difficult-to-access market, but the figures illustrate the drastic ways to tackle the issue. In Paris, public urban management allows the housing stock to increase by nearly 2,500 units per year. Of the latter, approximately half are major renovations. Another big difference is the large social park, with a large and sustained public investment that led to the addition of 3,374 new flats to this package in 2022, compared to 11,803 in Barcelona.
The commitment to social housing began in the French capital in the fifties with the aim of reaching 25% of the total market (now the proportion is 21.2%, compared to 2% in Barcelona). "Despite having in common the geographical pressure, the lack of land to build on and the market tensions, in Paris they do not experience the housing emergency that exists in Barcelona, because they have a series of public policies sustained over time and well endowed" , maintains Joan Ràfols, president of the Urban Property Chamber of Barcelona.
This entity has drawn up a comparison based on data from the Departmental Information Agency South L e Logement de Paris (Adil), in which the different composition of the property regime and the policies related to housing management are highlighted social and private. During 2022, direct aid to families to pay rent, whether public or private, reached 233,008 households.
"Another of the theses that we have been defending for some time to improve the situation that Barcelona is experiencing is to increase both the number of social and private housing with effective measures that allow the market to grow", adds Ràfols.
Among the measures applied in Paris is the solidarity surcharge, an additional amount that families living in social housing must pay if their income is above a certain level. This measure began to be considered in Paris in 2016 when it was detected that half of the residents of the social park had incomes higher than those required to access it that year. With this solidarity surcharge, the aim was to increase the mobility of tenants in order to have social housing for other families who needed it more.
The rental of privately owned homes represents nearly 44% of the Parisian park, compared to 29.8% of Barcelona, and the average price was 26.40 euros per square meter (compared to 14.50 euros in Barcelona) . "The result of the rental price control system in Paris, which was introduced in 2019, is still being discussed and evaluated," explains Ràfols, who calls for a calm debate that takes into account a broad and less politicized vision of the situation. The main criticisms are that price containment is insufficient for low-income families and does not create incentives for landlords to invest in apartment upgrades, which is another problem in a city with an older housing stock and the modernization and rehabilitation of which is a priority objective to have housing.
