Housing: from emergency to structural solution

BarcelonaThe housing decrees that were overturned on Friday in Congress were an emergency 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 L'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 to do 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 deal with the drama of evictions, regarding the underlying problem there is a fairly transversal 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 in February a plan to build up to 15,000 protected homes per year; the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, announced a year ago a plan 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 free up 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 errors that led to the urban bubble during the boom years cannot be repeated; therefore, it will be necessary to set reasonable profit margins (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 should always be a temporary 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 various 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 purchase and rent to be plausible options, and for the freedom of choice of each person 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 we are now, is not sustainable.