Not punishing non-compliant promoters is a bad strategy

When in 2018 the Barcelona City Council, headed by Ada Colau, implemented the measure that required 30% of new real estate developments and major renovations to be allocated to social housing, there was a lot of opposition from developers and the political opposition. They said, as has ended up happening, that there would be a drop in developments because it would not be worth it for them, and that this would mean fewer apartments on the market.According to current figures from Barcelona City Council, only 156 of the 1,650 planned homes are actually under construction to date. to the extent. In other words, only 10% of what was expected. For this reason, the municipal government is in talks with some groups to change, probably before the summer, the regulations based on a report written by Carme Trilla, president of the Metropolitan Housing Observatory.

While this change does not occur, however, the previous regulation remains in force, which had been approved in a plenary session with the votes of Barcelona en Comú, the PSC, ERC and Junts. For this reason, it is incomprehensible that the Barcelona City Council has already do not penalize promoters who evaded its application throughout 2022. The inspection services had detected up to 17 cases of non-compliance, but shortly after the PSC government came to power, the five disciplinary proceedings that had been initiated were dropped, as well as the rest, which were in more initial stages, and finally, and even more seriously, the inspections have stopped. The reason, according to municipal sources, is that there were legal doubts about the regulations and, in addition, in anticipation of the change in regulations, it was not considered pertinent to continue monitoring their application. The mayor's office assures that it was not aware that the proceedings had been dropped, which makes this measure even more unusual.

It is a very debatable strategy because, in addition to being unfair towards the developers who have complied with the regulations, it puts the administration in a weak position when it comes to negotiating in the future the rethinking of a regulation that forces private companies to build more public housing in any of the modalities that are decided. If the administration that must sanction and control them directly assumes that it is not necessary to do so, why should the law be complied with? One thing is to evaluate and negotiate compliance with the regulations in a more lax way, and another is to even directly allow inspections to be carried out.

In fact, what the Trilla report now proposes is not that public housing be stopped but that different developers can group the public housing that corresponds to them in the same block, in the same neighbourhood but not within the free market promotions that they do. It is still under discussion and we will have to see how it ends, but if it is done by imposition of some developers who, as recently pointed out, The Association of Developers of Catalonia is already asking that in mixed housing there be entrances for the poor and entrances for the rich., the danger of creating ghetto islands is very high. The role of the administration, and even more so if it is in the hands of left-wing parties, should be to avoid classism, promote integration and, above all, comply with and enforce the laws.