Catalonia, at the bottom of the state in terms of public housing quality
At the beginning of March, the press echoed the criticism of the Catalan government by Foment del Treball and the Association of Developers and Builders (APCE) for the agreements signed on housing. These agreements related to registration and taxes for large landowners, the extension of the right of first refusal and redemption, and others. The criticism criticized the restriction on the free market and claimed it was intended to protect the prospects of the real estate business. However, the angry tone and arguments employed were unusual, as these associations dared to recommend to the government, calling him ignorant, that he would not listen to the proposals of ERC and the Comuns, to finally demand that the voice of the "true professionals of the sector" be taken into account.
It is the Government's non-transferable responsibility to define the policy for access to decent housing, and it is also its responsibility to ensure that builders and developers obtain reasonable profits, provided they comply with the guidelines of the approved policy. In Catalonia, housing policy is regulated by the Right to Housing Act 18/2007, which updated the minimum habitability conditions that housing must meet through Decree 55/2009. This decree was drafted with the participation of professors, architects, developers, and other associations. As a result, it incorporated concepts of flexibility, adaptability, and accessibility, with dimensional requirements that are lower than those of other autonomous communities and slightly lower than those that have been in force since 1976 in Catalonia.
Decree 55/2009 was in force until 2012, and was repealed by the omnibus law of the Artur Mas government. This law, endorsed by socioeconomic stakeholders, entailed cuts in healthcare and education, and prompted those who now call themselves "true professionals in the sector" to directly draft a new habitability decree, Decree 141/2012. This decree, still in force, places the level of housing services in Catalonia at the bottom of those established by the rest of the Spanish regions, that is, at a level comparable to the housing in the first industrial estates of the Franco era. Thus, for example, common spaces are sized regardless of the number of people in the household; the master bedroom measures less than 7.5 m².2, including the closet, and the secondary bedrooms at 6 m2, including a closet; in sanitary chambers, if the shower tray is flush with the floor, it will count as usable surface area; in three-story buildings, developers will not be required to install an elevator; they may leave the hole for users to install themselves, etc. These limitations, which place public housing on the threshold of substandard housing, are aggravated by the inconsistency of a document—the result of an improvised reworking of the 2009 regulations—that incorporated objectives that were impossible to implement, given the migratory nature of the proposed services.
Today, we are no longer in the economic crisis of that time, but rather in a context of structural housing emergency, in which it would be absurd to rely on the widespread construction of substandard housing. This formula, as has been demonstrated, makes the unmet demand and the problem persist. It is therefore necessary to reverse the legacy of the so-called "professionals in the sector." And this while accepting that restoring the right to decent housing will encounter resistance from economic and financial stakeholders, accustomed to institutional patronage, among whom the idea has spread that public housing (as is the case with healthcare and education) should be aimed exclusively at the most disadvantaged economic sectors.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that "professionals in the sector" act in accordance with the interests of the associations they represent, but what should be surprising, however, is the inhibition of those "other professionals" who have forgotten their social function to focus on union defense, self-promotion, and international recognition. I am referring to the inhibition of those professional associations that participated in defending citizens' quality of life and have shown indifference to the regulatory regression of 2012 and its persistence thirteen years later. Perhaps it would be time for them to offer their institutional collaboration to modify a regulatory situation that should make our society and our government blush, compared to others that base their country's social cohesion on the well-being of their fellow citizens.