In 2007, the magazine Ideas In an excellent article by Jordi Mas, the Rafael Campalans Foundation proposed a Catalan Housing System understood as a "protection system based on rental housing," outlining an equitable policy designed to prevent the privatization of public housing and its high turnover. The aim was to ensure that public land was allocated to rentals and to foster a fairer system, capable of truly serving the families or age groups in need. This system would guarantee that when the tenants' personal circumstances improved, their rental contracts would not be renewed, and the apartments could be offered to a new family genuinely in need. Young people who had managed to stabilize their income after a few years would then transition to the private housing market.

The housing crisis is a European phenomenon, with Barcelona and Catalonia among its most tense areas. It's no surprise, then, that Mayor Collboni traveled to Brussels once again this week to address the issue through the Mayors for Housing alliance, which brings together 17 cities, including Paris, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Milan, and Rome. The mayors' goal is for the European Commission to create an affordable housing fund that would mobilize €300 billion in public and private funds annually.

Not only are they exorbitant prices in the free housing market wave scarcity of public promotions, social organizations also encounter a difficult barrier to overcome in the reluctance of owners when it comes to renting out apartments to vulnerable groups. Some explain that everything is going well until it is revealed that the apartment will be used to house an abused woman and her children, a group of people with disabilities or mental illness, or a family with limited financial resources.

The lack of affordable housing isn't just a concern for Barcelona. It also affects its metropolitan area, where the inability to find an apartment at an acceptable price is spreading like wildfire. With a skyrocketing real estate market, the Catalan capital and the 35 surrounding municipalities only have 1.8% of social housing, a proportion that the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) has been working to increase for years and trying to revive a sector that shrank in the wake of the real estate bubble and the economic crisis. "We're at 20% of what was produced before," remarks AMB manager Ramon Torra.

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.

It's a grey day in London, we've landed under a thick layer of clouds, but at least it's not raining. I have to go to the Prospect Magazine headquarters, where Alan Rusbridgerand the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have invited us to explain housing policies from different countries, and I've landed at Gatwick. Passport control; what a step backwards the United Kingdom has taken. Once I've passed the passport scan, the machine opens the doors to the kingdom. Gatwick is 40 km from London, and the train track runs through a completely urbanized landscape. It's as if Barcelona had houses and neighborhoods all the way to Sitges; as if the metropolis had swallowed up the Llobregat delta and the Garraf massif to turn it into a megacity. Later in the talk, we'll analyze why large cities haven't resolved housing inequalities either, but let's take it step by step.

The Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF), the Catalan government's public bank, will increase its workforce by 29 to meet its plan to allocate 600 million euros annually to finance social housing. The new feature is that the institution will be able to serve individuals for the first time. Specifically, young people up to 35 years old who request a 20% down payment on their first home, within the framework of the so-called emancipation fund, endowed with 100 million euros annually. The ICF currently has 108 professionals.

Barcelona will be raffling off its largest public housing development this Thursday at noon. At 12 noon this afternoon, the 11,243 families—and other household units—registered in the drawing for the apartments in the impressive Illa Glòries will be waiting for the event organized by the city council to announce the winners. The event can be followed via a link published on the Housing Department website. The municipal government expects the first tenants to begin arriving at the building in the summer.