A fast track to more social housing

A few days ago Maria Sisternas He told us: "[...] we must create the conditions for homes to be built with innovative tenure systems. Urban planning and housing, as in the times of Fourier, Cerdà, Ebenezer Howard, Geddes and Soria y Mata, are needed again" (NOW, 06/28/2025). Here is an answer, based on some considerations.

1. We need immediate action on housing... and then we'll implement broader policies.

2. What do we do? More public housing—housing on public land, as amenities, with limited floor space, no parking. Catalonia currently only has one for every thousand inhabitants. Each municipality would need to develop one for every thousand inhabitants per year. If you have ten thousand inhabitants, you get ten per year; if you have one hundred thousand, you get one hundred (every year).

3. Where can it be done? There's land to recover in the vast majority of municipalities—through orderly densification—at least for the first few years. It may not be enough in Barcelona, ​​but it's enough to get started.

4. Today, the mortgage repayment—the cost of construction—is lower than the rental payment. As for the land, it would be put into service free of charge, at least during the construction period.

5. Neither a lease nor a perpetual sale is required. Homes can be put up for temporary sale—for example, for a 50-year term.

6. In the public sector, we don't have enough non-profit organizations to be able to build social rental housing on a large scale.

7. Furthermore, the option of offering users only rentals isn't sufficiently dignified. Why shouldn't they be able to enjoy some property rights, even if only for a limited time?

8. Today, buying a flat is like buying a car and a pile of shares in a highway concessionaire (the land). If we unleash land construction, a new market emerges. The model would be like a joint ownership between the municipality (which provides the land, 20% of the cost) and the buyer (who provides 80% of the cost: construction). This joint ownership would generate a level of control over social housing for sale that doesn't currently exist and would allow for monitoring (sales, rentals, etc.).

9. We have banks, construction companies, developers, and clients, and we can be fast. All that's needed are municipal tenders, like those that awarded underground parking in a plaza, but now for apartments. We don't need the social paternalism that says everything must be done by the administration when we have sufficient social capacity distributed. But city councils must make the land available. And land, if there is land, there is land.

10. The new housing could create a new urban landscape: surrounding facilities, rebuilding excess road space, creating green spaces...

11. We would add 8,000 homes per year on a Catalan scale (40,000 in five years).

12. Only with an urban planning decree can the country's social capacity be unlocked and public action focused on land policy. The Generalitat (Catalan Government) must urgently mandate the creation of land for public housing.

13. An increase in one new home per thousand inhabitants each year would have an impact on the rental market in each municipality.

These strategic residential projects could, for example, create 240 student apartments in the center of Ciutat Badia, with a bridge to the Autonomous University, and rejuvenate the municipality. And we could continue at dozens more sites, with projects with a distinctly urban character. We just need design capacity, and we have plenty of it.

Is this all the housing policy we need? Absolutely not.