The housing crisis slows down the economy

Two out of every three Catalan SMEs have had problems filling vacancies with the candidates they would have liked because these candidates withdrew when they saw they would have trouble finding an affordable place to live. In fact, half of the country's small and medium-sized enterprises admit that they have abandoned growth projects, either by expanding their workforce or by opening new centers, due to the same issue. Because of the residential strain that workers suffered or, even, because the company itself could not find a more suitable place to make the growth leap due to the increase in prices. The study presented this Wednesday by the SME Observatory of the Catalan employers' association of small and medium-sized enterprises, Pimec, is a new demonstration of the extent to which the housing crisis is harming not only citizens, especially young people and those with more precarious salaries, but it is also a general problem that clearly and worryingly hinders the entire country's economy and prevents it from advancing at the desired pace.

In fact, another report, in this case from the Council for Labour, Economy and Social Affairs of Catalonia (CTESC), also highlights this problem and warns that the difficulty in accessing housing is one of the causes, along with the stagnation of productivity and the persistence of inequalities, that limit the country's economic and social development potential. Macro figures, it acknowledges, are good, but when you look closely, you see that in reality the numbers do not correspond to a global improvement in society and the quality of life of citizens. The problems of access to housing are mainly faced by workers and young families, who are precisely the backbone of the workforce needed to grow the country's economy. It is a kind of perverse loop in which the lack of housing causes precariousness and hinders growth, which leads to inequality continuing to rise even though the economy as a whole maintains good figures, partly thanks to a booming real estate market that causes increasing exclusion.

As pointed out by the CTESC, to reverse this, several measures are needed, most of them already announced, such as an increase in affordable supply and the streamlining of housing development and rehabilitation, but also improving mobility – and the situation of both Rodalies and the road network does not help, right now – and planning for sustainable territorial development appropriate to the needs of a society that has grown and requires resizing services to the real population. And, of course, improved and fair regional financing. In any case, both regarding specific measures – which are possibly proving insufficient – and regarding financing and global investments, what is really needed is execution. The diagnosis is more than made, and there are plenty of promises. What is lacking is concretization, fulfilling what has been promised, rendering accounts, and demanding that both public administrations and the private sector assume their responsibility. As demonstrated, the housing crisis affects the poor more, but it is only a matter of time, and not much, before it also affects the entire economic and social fabric of the country.