More figures from the 50,000 Plan: the Government says it has 10,000 apartments, but does not give more details about them

BarcelonaThe 50,000 Plan is the great promise of Salvador Illa's government. Two years after the announcement of the measure, the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, assured, in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio this Friday, that there are "practically" 10,000 apartments "finished," and that 28,000 more are "in projection." The data, however, do not coincide with those held by Catalan builders, who state that "there are only 3,000 apartments put out to tender and awarded", in the words of the president of the Chamber of Construction Contractors of Catalonia (CCOC), Lluís Moreno, this same Friday in the ARA.

Paneque explained that the 10,000 finished homes—"meaning with the key and that families can access them"—have entered the public stock through "pre-emptive purchase and retraction, emancipation loans for young people, and the construction of apartments." The Government has refused to detail how many homes each of the instruments has incorporated, upon questioning by this newspaper. Nor has it specified at what stage the 28,000 apartments that are "in projection" are, nor when it believes they will be available.

In turn, the contractors' estimate of 3,000 apartments comes from the study of public tenders. Moreno lists two from the Housing Agency of Catalonia: the first of about 1,950 apartments distributed in four lots, and the second, this July, of about 480 more homes. He also adds "about 500 more apartments" promoted by city councils, such as those of Sabadell, Barcelona, and Mataró.

The apartments must be new construction

In parallel, Moreno warns that the 50,000 Plan refers only to new construction apartments, because the objective is to expand the housing stock. The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, spoke about it during his first general policy debate in Parliament: "I announce a new public housing program from the Government, with the goal of building 50,000 public homes in the coming years, until 2030, with an annual investment from the Generalitat of 1.1 billion euros. 4.4 billion euros over the entire term".

The president of the CCOC believes that "they are mixing up" two different political commitments in terms of housing: on one hand, the 50,000 Plan, and on the other, the 214,000 Plan, which are homes that must be put "into production". "It is parallel to the 50,000 apartments until 2030, and it involves doing all the work that enables the surfaces so that, one day, they can be built upon", he explains.

Moreno has lamented that if the 10,000 apartments announced this Friday by Paneque "were already built, we are not improving the problem" because "people who do not meet the criteria to qualify for social emergency are left with fewer apartments available to buy or rent".

The rent cap "works"

During the interview on the public radio, Paneque has defended that the Government is allocating to housing a volume of economic resources "never seen before" but has warned that time is needed to reverse the serious crisis that the country is experiencing. "Until Catalonia has, like some European cities and countries, around 15% of public housing, we will not be able to guarantee affordable housing to the citizens," she warned. The minister has assured that "at this moment" the weight of public housing is "growing," but that "more is still needed."

On the other hand, the minister has assured that the rent cap "works" because in autonomous communities without the regulation, price increases "are in double digits." However, she insisted that "the containment of rents, the role it had was to contain" and that it is not a measure to influence the market structurally.