"An internal explosion is occurring": the outcry from Catalan universities regarding housing laws

BarcelonaAt the doors of the general strike for housing and wages, and a few days before Congress votes on the Spanish government's housing decrees, four of the country's most prestigious universities have wanted to have their say and try to clarify the debate. The University of Barcelona (UB), the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) have railed against the “low-quality overregulation” in housing matters, in the words of Juli Ponce Solé, a doctor of law at the UB.

The four institutions are part of the Barcelona Housing Studies Chair (CBEH), an umbrella that brings together some seventy researchers in the fields of law, economics and architecture with the aim of providing rigorous knowledge to administrations and governments. In this body “there is no conflict of interest” because, unlike much other research, it is not funded by professional associations or companies, Ponce stressed at a press conference this Monday. It obtains public resources from the administrations and its researchers are guaranteed “academic freedom”.

“Uninterrupted succession of decrees”

The project coordinators lamented this Monday that there is “an uninterrupted succession of decree laws that aim to solve the housing issue.” The fact that it is the main concern of Catalans confirms that it is a matter “of extraordinary and urgent necessity,” but Ponce assured that it has been occurring “for decades.” Nowadays, “there is an internal explosion of the legal system taking place,” he summarized. And he added: “Few people in Catalonia, including public workers and professors, know what the current legal system is, and this generates a terrifying legal insecurity.”

David Hernández Falagán, a professor of Architecture at the UPC, reiterated once again that housing policies need “continuity” to have an impact, but this clashes with the functioning of the administrations: “We encounter very new people every little while, and a variation of interests, it is a structural difficulty,” he stated.

The representatives of the chair stressed that “there is a lot of research” on housing issues, and that the Barcelona chair is the largest in the European network.