The Spanish government takes a further step to strengthen the State Housing Company (Sepes) after the legislative change that allows it to "manage and build housing". This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers approved the incorporation of more than 40,000 Sareb apartments into this public company. Of the total apartments, 9,257 are located in Catalonia, or 27.8%, according to data from the Ministry of Housing. Additionally, 2,400 plots of land with a capacity of 55,000 apartments are to be incorporated, according to the Ministry's calculations. The Spanish government's objective is for all of them to become part of the state's public housing stock—Spain has been at the bottom of the European list for years—and be allocated to social rentals. This measure adds to the list of formulas, especially rentals, that currently affect citizens. "The goal is to make these apartments available to families for affordable rentals," stated the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, at a press conference after the Council of Ministers. The impact will not be immediate.

How many floors are we talking about?

The Ministry of Housing has identified more than 40,000 properties, as well as 2,400 plots of land where 55,000 apartments could be built. These plots are now in the hands of Sareb, which will become part of the Sepes (Spanish Housing Authority). The number of apartments already built alone is greater than the real estate assets currently held by Sareb (approximately 37,500 homes, as verified by ARA). The government's announcement includes more homes, taking into account the properties that Sareb expects to receive in the next two years from non-payments by developers or construction companies during the real estate boom, which are still being disputed in court.

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez kicked off the year by announcing a plan to mobilize affordable rentals across the country and reverse the difficulties faced by many citizens, especially young people and migrants, in accessing housing. Five months later, and amid social pressure with demonstrations for the right to housing in the country's main cities, some of the measures were put into writing through a bill that the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) filed in the Congress of Deputies. Specifically, in the text presented this Thursday, the Socialists incorporate many of the fiscal measures from the plan announced by Sánchez.

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"Now I have to choose between paying social rent or eating." Rita González is a single-parent mother who lives with her two daughters in a blog owned by Barcelona City Council, in the Raval neighborhood, and says that social rent is "suffocating" her. They have the status of a vulnerable family and a subsidized rent for which until a few months ago they paid 120 euros a month. But since January of last year, she explains, the fees have increased to reach 500 euros. "Without any warning, without any explanation," she insists.

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The accountability for the promise to build 4,000 public rental housing units and to add 4,000 more through purchase or transfer accompanied the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, during her first period at the head of the City Council. The dance of figures between government and opposition about what was being done and the accusations of having sold the impossible were repeated in almost every plenary session. And they are still going on. The then head of Housing, Josep Maria Montaner, detailed at the beginning of the mandate that they had been able to hand over the keys to some 830 new-build flats but that they had laid the foundations so that in the following mandate there could be an acceleration, with 4,700 homes at some point in the production process. In fact, in the housing plan they presented in 2016, they set themselves the challenge of building almost a thousand flats a year: 8,854 new homes by 2025. And now the government of comuns and socialists in the city boasts that it is leading this acceleration and says it has 2,329 flats under construction or about to start them.

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The collateral effects of the covid-19 pandemic, still painfully among us, are like ivy covering the entire façade of our cracked social edifice. The metaphor is pertinent because housing is, right now, one of the greatest weak points. We had already come from a precarious situation, the result of the economic crisis of 2008, which had become bogged down and has now only worsened due to the economic ravages also caused by the coronavirus. The moratorium on evictions for people in social emergency situations has managed to stop the blow, but if, as planned, it ends with the end of the state of alarm on May 9, we will come across a new wave of homeless people difficult to manage. Many families will face the threat of becoming homeless with the end of the furlough scheme and the self-employed aid, measures that, if there is no further extension, will expire around the same time, on May 31.

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