The Government allocates an additional €251M to the promotion of affordable public housing

BarcelonaThe Government reinforces its objective of building 50,000 public housing units by 2030 with the announcement of a new investment. This Tuesday, the Catalan executive has authorized the Catalan Land Institute (Incasòl) to allocate an additional 251.8 million euros to the promotion of affordable public homes, a figure that comes from the treasury surpluses of the 2025 fiscal year and can be used throughout 2026. "This measure must allow for an increase in Incasòl's contribution to address the housing market situation, as well as the need to expand the public stock," specify the Government agreements published this Tuesday, which also indicate that the executive is working on "other avenues" to expand the current housing supply.

In this regard, the administration – through the Housing Agency of Catalonia – has today opened a tender to find individual developers interested in building 783 public homes on 59 plots in 40 municipalities. Most of the plots are small, with capacity for 20 homes or fewer.

Of these, 38 plots located in 27 municipalities – with a potential to build 526 homes – come from town councils, which ceded them due to a lack of technical means to organize a public tender themselves. According to the Government, this is the first time the Generalitat is tendering construction on plots that are not under its ownership.

As for the rest, 16 plots located in 8 municipalities – and which can accommodate up to 201 homes – are directly owned by Incasòl, while the remaining five plots – with capacity for 56 homes – have the Generalitat as the owner.

This Tuesday, the Government announced the publication of the specifications for the 59 plots on the Generalitat's Contracting Platform, a file accompanied by a form for developers to submit their application, along with the tender documents that will govern the bidding process. Once a developer submits an application, the tender for that plot remains open for a period of one month. The rest of the plots will remain on the Contracting Platform until there is a developer interested in building on them.

Less bureaucracy in rural areas

In line with the objective of speeding up housing creation in Catalonia, the Government has also approved this Tuesday a decree-law to reduce bureaucracy in rural municipalities. According to the executive, the measure "aims to promote territorial balance and population settlement" in the 590 municipalities in Catalonia that are classified as rural, around 62% of the total in the country.

According to data presented by the Catalan executive, more than 80% of municipalities with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants have only had general housing plans approved for at least 15 years. Similarly, only 45% of towns with fewer than 2,000 residents have a Municipal Urban Planning Plan (POUM). For the Government, "this situation hinders these town councils' ability to respond to the demographic, housing, and economic challenges currently facing the country".

One of the main novelties included in the decree-law is the creation of the rural POUM, a new urban planning instrument intended for this type of population. The executive highlights that this new instrument – which has the same legal value as an ordinary POUM – "introduces measures for more agile processing and simplified documentation and environmental assessment".

Thus, the Government argues that the new tool achieves "a proportionality between content and the real complexity of the municipality", a balance it considers "key" to "shorten deadlines" and manage "the complexity of processing".

On the other hand, the Catalan administration is creating a catalog that includes rural buildings without specific heritage value, but which can be recovered under certain conditions for uses such as habitual residence. Finally, the decree-law incorporates measures in public procurement to simplify procedures and reduce contracting deadlines.