Housing: from emergency to structural solution
BarcelonaThe housing decrees that were overturned on Friday in Congress were an urgent response to the social outcry caused by cases such as that of Maricarmen Abascal, the 87-year-old woman who was evicted in Madrid, or that of Olga, the resident of Hospitalet who committed suicide after losing her home, but they did not represent a structural solution to the problem. This is known even by the promoters of the decrees and the parties that voted in favor of them. Therefore, the first thing needed is to distinguish between the response to the social emergency posed by evictions and the more fundamental and multifactorial issue of access to decent housing under proper conditions.
The most curious thing is that, just as there has been no way to forge an agreement to address the drama of evictions, regarding the underlying problem there is a fairly cross-cutting consensus between left and right: it is necessary to build more and faster, especially protected housing. The different parties and practically all administrations have made numerous announcements in recent years about the construction of public housing. Pedro Sánchez announced a plan in February to build up to 15,000 protected homes per year; the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, announced a plan a year ago to build 210,000 homes, and the opposition leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has promised the construction of one million homes if he reaches the government.
The question is: instead of making announcements as if it were a Persian market, why not reach a cross-party agreement to release land, streamline urban planning and building permit processes, and provide incentives for the private sector to start building housing in collaboration with the administrations? There is also a tacit agreement that the mistakes that led to the real estate bubble of the boom years cannot be repeated; therefore, reasonable profit margins will need to be set (in exchange for having a secure profit) to prevent the market from overheating. It is not for nothing that real estate bubbles have become a danger all over the world.
All this new housing must be able to be directed towards purchase but also towards rent. Some parties, especially the PP and Vox, sell the message that living in a rental must always be a provisional solution and that the ideal is to become a homeowner. And, therefore, tenants of a certain age are, in reality, failures. This idea is deeply rooted in mentalities and different governments have encouraged it fiscally, and this is what has caused most family savings to traditionally end up in the brick sector, and not in others that could be more productive. The administration must make it possible for both buying and renting to be plausible options, and for the freedom of choice of each individual to prevail.
On these bases, it should not be impossible to reach agreements between parties and administrations. Because it has already been proven that the alternative, continuing as things are, is not sustainable.