The Barcelona metropolitan area will gain 6,000 subsidized apartments over the next five years.

BarcelonaThe lack of affordable housing isn't just a concern for Barcelona. It also affects its metropolitan area, where the inability to find an apartment at an acceptable price is spreading like wildfire. With a skyrocketing real estate market, the Catalan capital and the 35 surrounding municipalities only have 1.8% of social housing, a proportion that the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) has been working to increase for years and trying to revive a sector that shrank in the wake of the real estate bubble and the economic crisis. "We're at 20% of what was produced before," remarks AMB manager Ramon Torra.

The machinery has started up again, but it's not easy, with construction companies unable to find sufficient personnel or the necessary replacements. Between 2019 and 2025, the AMB has promoted the development of some 5,000 social housing units. This figure is expected to increase over the next five years, with 6,000 more public housing units, and to add around 11,000 over a decade. All these apartments will contribute in the plan of Salvador Illa's executive, which plans to build 50,000 public apartments.

The tools that the AMB has to put protected apartments on the market are the Metropolitan Institute for Land Promotion and Heritage Management (IMPSOL), which will promote 6,000 apartments between 2019 and 2030, and Vivienda Metrópolis Barcelona, ​​​​a public-private operator that is built in 0000000000. in the Catalan capital. Vivienda Metrópolis Barcelona, ​​​​formed by Barcelona City Council, the AMB and the developers Neinor and Cevasa, is working on the development of 1,828 homes, with the first ones expected to be delivered by the end of this year, located in Sant Boi de Llobregat. An alliance with the private sector that the mayor of Cornellà and executive vice president of the AMB, Antonio Balmón, advocates expanding to tackle a problem that is increasingly widespread in more social strata.

We need to rebuild, and government agencies are seeking every possible way to revive the sector. The AMB (Association of Municipalities of Madrid) is committed to developing social housing, not just for rent but also for sale. It's a strategy they've already followed in a development like the one developed by the Peris+Toral firm in Cornellà de Llobregat, winner of several national and international awards. "We need to build all types of housing, including private housing. It's not beneficial to create a monoculture, especially in neighborhoods where the goal is to reverse degradation and make them more attractive," emphasizes the AMB manager. Along these lines, the director of IMPSOL, Josep Maria Morell, maintains that promoting social housing for sale seeks to anchor owners in the area where they live and achieve a stability that ten-year rental contracts don't allow.

Nearly half a million apartments to be renovated

Added to this is the urgency of renovating an aging housing stock, especially in areas such as energy efficiency, with uninsulated buildings that rely too heavily on heating and air conditioning to withstand a climate that is not what it was fifty years ago. The supra-municipal administration estimates that 450,000 apartments need renovation in the metropolitan area, where 43% of Catalonia's population lives.

Precisely, the areas where the most air conditioning work has been carried out so far have been in higher-income neighborhoods, where the expense and all the procedures involved were easier to afford, but not so much in others where the work was more urgent. This is where the AMB (Association of Municipalities of Catalonia) wants to make an impact by making it easier for everyone to do so. With the help of European funds, nearly €100 million has been made available to municipalities, with subsidies of up to 80% of the cost of the works and exempt from personal income tax, and almost 7,000 homes have been renovated, "like never before," Torra argues.

Some are in Cornellà, a city where 69% of the blocks of flats were built between the 1950s and 1980s. In the Sant Ildefons neighborhood, work is underway to improve more than 1,100 apartments, with the aim of reaching around 3,600. Measures are being implemented such as reducing energy costs by 45%, installing elevators in buildings where they didn't exist or making them accessible in those where steps hindered access, enlarging balconies or building new ones to improve habitability, and removing existing asbestos.

The AMB also advocates for the rehabilitation of unused buildings not intended for housing to generate more apartments. An example of this is in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, where the third and fourth floors of an office building have been converted into more than 30 apartments. For Borrell, the focus should also be on heritage buildings or industrial estates. "It's a question of the future," he emphasizes. This growth must always accompany developments with the development of public facilities to avoid the shortage of educational places experienced in cities like L'Hospitalet de Llobregat.