Investing effectively in housing

Browsing a real estate portal is torture today. A lot of renovation has been done in wealthy neighborhoods, and the result is many buildings renovated without any public aid. However, without regulation on sale prices or the accumulation of properties, the medium-term impact is refurbished apartments that are rented out by the day or sold to foreign buyers with the expectation that they will never lose value. And, at the same time, residents of Eixample, Gràcia, or Poblenou are leaving Barcelona because they can't afford these prices. The social cost of this transformation is high because the city is unable to capture the value it itself has generated, which generates powerlessness. We can't take 20 years to build an alternative public park because if we don't act now, the segregation between rich and poor cities will be irreversible.

Despite the fact that there are many vacant lots for social housing, we are now suffering the impact of the lack of investment in housing over the last twenty years. Around 1,500 social housing units are being completed annually, while around 7,500 are being disqualified each year. In other words, in absolute terms, Catalonia has been losing more social housing units for years than it can build. It is difficult to understand why €7 billion has been found to finance public works such as Line 9 of the Barcelona metro, yet it is so difficult to approve a state budget for the State Housing Plan, which, in five years, plans to invest the same amount across Spain. Or why the Sagrera project was initially budgeted at €335 million, and the investment figure has already exceeded €2.1 billion, without even stopping the trains.

Is it possible to have more public housing in a few years? In Paris, data indicates that since 2011, 126,544 new affordable homes have been financed, representing approximately 5,000 new social housing units per year, built by the private or non-profit sector with public support and financing. In just a few years, they have doubled the off-market housing stock, and now have approximately 272,000. That's why, in Paris, there are alternative real estate portals from the third sector, public developers, and unions that offer rentals at affordable prices. And many of the homes have been newly built and boast high architectural standards.

How can we accelerate the production of affordable housing here? Can we recover Sareb housing? For millennia, when a house's structure collapsed, the stones were used to fill the foundations of a nearby house. But Sareb structures are made of reinforced concrete, and the remaining apartments were built before the Technical Building Code was approved; under current regulations, they must be rebuilt from top to bottom to legalize them. They are the exquisite corpses that no one dares to renovate. In an emergency context like the current one, it doesn't seem essential to demolish the structures or partitions to make the apartments available. After all, there are plenty of apartments on the secondhand market that don't meet current habitability or accessibility regulations and, instead, are suitable for certain family units. If they are rehabilitated as affordable apartments, can't the regulatory requirements be lowered?

With the same resources, can't you build two half floors instead of one? On weekends, DIY stores are full of people buying bags of cement, tiles, electrical cables, and so on to build their own custom-made homes, incrementally. Structures (roofs, floors, facades) must be solid and designed to last a hundred years. But bathrooms, kitchens, and interior partitions shouldn't last that long. So why don't we make it easier for those who want to build a custom-made home to do it themselves? A young couple who've just moved out doesn't need the same kitchen equipment as a family with three children. This is a recurring debate among architects that no one has yet addressed.

And finally, there's the issue of parking. Urban development plans often require parking beneath subsidized housing, but this makes development more expensive. In small towns, this means the numbers don't add up, and the lots have been dying for years, without anyone even installing a tow truck. Why build ground-floor parking on a small plot of land designated for subsidized housing in a small town, if the streets are full of parking spaces? If instead of four apartments, six can be built on a plot, at the expense of parking, isn't it worth making this aspect more flexible in the planning of hundreds of small towns in Catalonia? The mission of creating affordable housing, which concerns us all, now requires practicality and speed.