We have seen it with Casa Orsola. Another episode, this time with a happy ending for the tenants and many questions about the future of the other Casas Orsola in Barcelona. One flower does not make a summer. Every day we explain a residential crisis with many facets, with a very wide range of cases. Today we report the sad reality of a vocational training student – a very good student – of Moroccan origin who has had to live on the street: the help of the teachers has saved him and now he is waiting for a more stable solution. It is an extreme case. Others are much more common and less dramatic, but equally worrying: many young people from middle-class families (understood as a wide range of others) who cannot emancipate themselves because prices are skyrocketing. The limits of the stressed areas have slowed the rise, but it is not enough. The supply does not grow. Tourism and foreign investors continue to strain the market upwards. And a significant volume of empty apartments remains.
These dysfunctions must be broken with effective and pragmatic policies. Vigorously expanding the supply is the most obvious solution, an expansion that must come about through joint action by the public and private sectors. Housing construction in Catalonia increased by 8.2% in 2024 compared to 2023, but the 15,604 properties started are still below the 25,000 units per year that the Generalitat considers necessary. These are data from the annual study carried out by the Association of Developers and Builders of Catalonia (APCE), which regrets a delay in the construction of flats that has been dragging on since 2009. We have therefore been idling for three decades. The private sector attributes this to four factors: lack of land, legal uncertainty, lack of effective housing policies and administrative slowness. There are town councils that take more than a year to process building permits, when the legal deadline is two months.
In the case of Barcelona city, 1,151 homes were started last year, 10.8% less than in 2023. The capital has a very serious problem, a problem, however, that, beyond whether the 30% reserve of protected housing in new developments that seems to have been discouraged should be maintained, must be addressed: living far from the centre should not be a problem if the train or metro connections are good, something that is clearly not the case now. Housing and mobility are connected vessels. This is where planning and public investment must come in. The scepticism of the builders regarding the Isla government's commitment to build 50,000 flats goes in this direction: the "good intention" is valued, but an associated budget is lacking that would allow us to believe in it.
Right now the citizen cry is "flats, flats, flats!" The jingling of keys in the demonstrations has become a common place. They are a widely shared demand and need. Affordable flats that make the right to housing a reality. In the 21st century, in an advanced society like Catalonia, it is hard to understand that we have gone backwards in terms of housing. Homelessness, hot beds, substandard housing, sub-letting, flats in shantytowns and overcrowding are the order of the day. It is imperative to get out of this hole.
