Housing: a national agreement, please
Parliament has approved the law by regulate seasonal and room rentalsThe objective? To prevent the use of these methods to circumvent the rent cap, in effect in Spain since March 2024. The initiative, a pioneering one in Spain, was approved thanks to the votes of the PSC, ERC, Comuns, and CUP parties. A broader consensus would have been desirable. The housing crisis is now the central element of the political agenda, the one that generates the most discontent and inequality, the one that has opened a vast generational gap, and the one that puts strain on families and cities. And it easily leads to political demagoguery. The PP's announcement that it will take the law to the Constitutional Court is a step in that direction. The situation is so serious that we cannot afford to turn housing into a matter of jurisdictional disputes. It's time to unite, reach consensus, and find solutions. We are talking about a social crisis of enormous proportions that continues to grow.
The law in question won't be a panacea, but it's an attempt worth trying. The problem is structural and requires parallel approaches. In short, we need to build quickly and regulate the market. How? With the involvement of the public and private sectors, and with a minimum of political consensus to guarantee a basic right. We have universal public healthcare and education for all. We need to get serious about housing. Especially by building.
Without having to move towards an exclusively public and subsidized housing stock, we do need to find mixed solutions to curb price speculation. In the case of Greater Barcelona, this will only be achieved by planning the territory as a whole, providing good mobility—improving public transport: commuter rail, metro, buses—that allows for reasonably efficient commuting, and by acting in coordination among the different administrations—city councils, the Metropolitan Area, provincial councils, and the national government—and political groups, and between political groups and social service providers. There is a lot of work to be done, and it is urgent. Everyone needs to roll up their sleeves.
In case anyone isn't yet fully aware of the tragedy, just read the report recently published by Caritas Barcelona: 400,000 people in the Barcelona metropolitan area live in overcrowded conditions, that is, in sublet rooms and shared apartments. And if we go to an even more extreme example, we've just witnessed the eviction of the residents (around 400 people) who were occupying the abandoned B9 high school in Badalona, most of them undocumented migrants. Forced to live on the streets, Caritas itself is trying to offer them some solutions in the face of the hostility with which Mayor Xavier García Albiol has treated them.
But the reality is that the housing problem is not only a matter of marginalization and extreme poverty, but also affects, and increasingly so, a large middle class, who anxiously endure having to dedicate more than half of a family's income to housing, and who always do so under the shadow of their desire. It is necessary to put an end to this housing insecurity. The maintenance of social cohesion largely depends on this.
