First housing plan of the Spanish government within the framework of the new housing law. This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers presented the pillars of its policy to try to solve citizens' main problem, according to the CIS, but with the difficulty that a significant part of the competencies is in the hands of the autonomous communities. The minister in charge, Isabel Rodríguez, has assured that the "public housing stock is protected" to prevent the investment of state funds in the construction and habilitation of buildings from ending up in private hands. "Until now, the role of the general administration of the State was that of a paying agent," said Rodríguez, whereas now its intention is to intervene in the autonomous communities to ensure citizens' "rights".

In Catalonia, the population grows by 1% each year. In a population of 8 million people, this means 80,000 more people annually. According to Idescat, it's 76,000. If there are 3 people per household, this is equivalent to about 26,000 new homes each year (80,000/3 = 26,000). When land is ceded by municipalities, the construction of a home of about 80 or 100 m² has a cost of €150,000. The total annual investment to do this is, therefore, 3.9 billion euros per year (26,000x150,000 = 3.9 billion €/year). We must start by creating a territorial plan for Catalonia that identifies available land and facilitates municipalities making it available to the Generalitat for construction. However, is it viable to create a public-private company that builds these homes and rents them directly to individuals? If the investment amortization period is set at thirty years, the public debt it will entail will be around 117,000 million euros (3.900x30 = 117.000 M€). In the case of a 50% public and private investment, it would amount to 58,500 million euros.The average gross income of a Catalan family with two workers is €36,000/year (€1,500 x 12 months x 2 people = €36,000). The net income, after deducting income tax, is €25,200 (€36,000x0.7 = €25,200/year). The cost of a rental property should not exceed 30% of net income to live with some margin; that is, the rental cost should be less than €7,560/year (€25,200x0.3 = €7,560/year).The income generated by this rental —the  7,560 €— should remunerate three concepts. Calculated per dwelling and year, they are:—The return of the invested public capital (€75,000, equivalent to 50% of the €150,000 construction cost, over thirty years). €75,000/30 = €2,500/year.—The remuneration of the private investor (the remaining €75,000, starting from an investment of 5% profitability). 75,000x0.05= €3,750/year.—The payment of the debt interest (assuming an interest rate of 3% per year and calculated with a margin to cover interest variation and management cost). 75,000x0.03 ≈ 2,500 €/year.Therefore, the families'  7,560 € would not be enough to remunerate the sum of the three concepts, which amounts to  8,750 €.This situation would only be possible if families' income tax were halved during the rental period; that is, (36,000-25,200)/2 = €5,440/year. Thus, available family income would go from €25,200 to €30,560 (€36,000-€5,440 = €30,560). The percentage of net income after taxes dedicated to housing would be 8,750/30,560 = 29%, and it would meet the objective set by independent organizations.A rental housing system financed by public and private capital can be a solution, which, moreover, has the advantage of offering security and profitability to private investment. According to the Draghi report, the European Union has more private savings than the United States, but no mechanisms for investment. This would be one. However, the following conditions would need to be met:—The agreement must be controlled and guaranteed by public administrations, private investors, and tenants.—The project must be maintained as a whole; not individually, housing by housing. It gives security to the investor and the tenant.—Getting municipalities to cede square meters of municipal land is not possible unless it is with the patronage of the State.This is a model that promotes housing for the population with medium-low incomes at a moderate cost. It has been used in Holland and Austria. It is a safe, but not a quick, solution.

A good book on housing is by Javier Gil, Generación inquilina, published by Capitán Swing. It is because it is written in plain language and grounds some of the forecasts that Saskia Sassen and Richard Sennett had made in the case of post-bubble Spain. The author explains that the contradictions in housing matters in the Western world begin with the neoliberal policies of dispossession of the working class, with a battery of decisions that favored rampant speculation and the preference for the accumulation of wealth, which reversed the trend of stable rents towards the purchase of housing for investment. He connects it with the well-known theses of Thomas Piketty: when housing is an investment good, it becomes inaccessible to the majority and patrimonial income grows above labor income.However, in addition, Gil quantifies the magnitude of the tragedy in Spain: after 2007, investment funds such as Blackstone, Lone Star, Oaktree, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs or Cerberus bought hundreds of thousands of homes from Spanish banks. Blackstone, Cerberus and Lone Star alone acquired 450,000 homes in Spain in a few operations. The giant Blackstone has bought large volumes of apartments in Spain, while in the rest of the world it has more diversified assets. This deserves a study, because, simultaneously, many local developers have been lost.Meanwhile, the State allocated 72 billion to the bailout of banks, and 51 billion for the creation of Sareb. Gil asks an important question: what would have happened if the largest mobilization of public funds in history had been used to buy the homes obtained through evictions?

Why is density frightening? Because until fifty years ago, unless expressly prohibited, property owners could add floors, increase building volume, and change the use of their properties without any repercussions for the city. If more wasn't done, it was because the load-bearing walls could only support two or three additional stories, not much more. The resulting appearance of cities was quite wild, with blocks of streets that, overnight, had taller facades without any increase in street width, thus losing light and air inside the dwellings.

The housing crisis, and especially its rising prices, is caused by many factors, but one of them is a lack of supply. Economic laws explain that when there is high demand for a product and low supply, prices rise. Therefore, more housing would have to be built to lower apartment prices, which seems difficult, according to the building permit data from the College of Architects of Catalonia (COAC) published this Thursday. The number of permits is falling, indicating that new apartment construction will decline in the coming months.

The Balearic Government will launch a tender on Friday for 37 plots of land to build public housing. These are disused municipal plots ceded by the town councils. The Executive anticipates the construction of 1,940 apartments in 23 municipalities, which will be offered at affordable rent for 75 years. The Minister of Territory, Housing, and Ecological Transition, Silvia Paneque, emphasized that this first tender is a "historic step" because, for the first time in Spain, a stable mechanism is being activated to "mobilize public land and generate affordable housing continuously and on a large scale." According to the Minister, this is a "first wave" of public plots, and she announced that there will be more tenders throughout 2026. In fact, the Government spokesperson also explained that the subsequent calls for tenders are already being prepared. For this first competition, which will be launched on Friday, the Government has organized four groups by territorial zones, and each group will involve the construction of between 400 and 500 homes.

Parliament has approved the law by regulate seasonal and room rentalsThe objective? To prevent the use of these methods to circumvent the rent cap, in effect in Spain since March 2024. The initiative, a pioneering one in Spain, was approved thanks to the votes of the PSC, ERC, Comuns, and CUP parties. A broader consensus would have been desirable. The housing crisis is now the central element of the political agenda, the one that generates the most discontent and inequality, the one that has opened a vast generational gap, and the one that puts strain on families and cities. And it easily leads to political demagoguery. The PP's announcement that it will take the law to the Constitutional Court is a step in that direction. The situation is so serious that we cannot afford to turn housing into a matter of jurisdictional disputes. It's time to unite, reach consensus, and find solutions. We are talking about a social crisis of enormous proportions that continues to grow.

On the 5th, the president of the employers' association Fomento, Josep Sánchez Llibre, proposed to Spanish society a social pact in favor of immigration, avoiding the ideological and partisan character that characterizes the debate and focusing it on the economic effects that the demographic evolution is having.

The scarcity of final-use land (consolidated urban land) for building affordable housing is usually attributed to planning (to the technical complexity of urban planning), but Ignacio Ezquiaga, in a study for the Funcas Foundation, has another explanation, which seems convincing to me in light of what I know about Sareb.

Barcelona City Council is accelerating the rollout of Pla Viure, the municipal strategy designed to address the housing crisis and ensure that access to decent and affordable housing is no longer the primary concern for citizens. With the slogan "We prioritize housing," the plan positions this policy as one of the top priorities of its term and outlines the actions to be taken to guarantee and universalize the right to housing. The Pla Viure structures the municipal housing strategy around three cross-cutting areas of focus: universalizing the right to housing, rehabilitating and improving existing housing with sustainability and comfort criteria, and addressing vulnerability and the different life stages of the population. It also includes measures aimed at vulnerable groups such as young people and students, households (families and children), the elderly, people with disabilities or reduced mobility, and people experiencing loneliness or poverty. Universalizing the right to housing

To reverse the situation of difficulty in accessing housing, the first pillar of the Pla Viure (Living Plan) prioritizes ensuring that everyone can live in decent and affordable housing. To this end, this pillar establishes three main objectives: expanding the stock of subsidized housing, using all available resources to develop vacant lots and build public housing, and involving the entire public and private sectors in housing development.

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I'm writing from a mountainous landscape, past the Toses pass, among trees of warm colors, a prelude to winter. Leaving the AP-7 and the Eix Transversal has made me confront the stark reality of the half of Catalonia's municipalities that are losing population. You can see it from the roads: the closed restaurants, the shops with empty signs, the lack of life on the streets.

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"For five years I've been waiting to see if I get any notifications, if someone knocks on the door, or if someone comes up the stairs to kick me out. Now that's over and I feel privileged. But it shouldn't be like this." This is Juanjo speaking, a historic activist from Meridian City, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Barcelona. Its history shows the housing crisisHaving experienced all the stages of this problem firsthand, today, however, he has reason to celebrate: the Sostre Cívic cooperative and the Tenants' Union have announced their first joint purchase, that of the apartment where he lives. neighbor and activist. With the acquisition of the property, the organizations emphasize, a double objective is achieved: eviction is permanently prevented, and the apartment is guaranteed to be part of the public system, for social and affordable use.

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Not being able to lead a truly independent life until the age of 35 is what happens to eight out of ten Catalans. It is a clear-cut social anomaly. Dependence on parents—that is, being forced to share a home with their parents—and, in turn, partly depend on their income—prevents a large number of young people from having the independence in life that previous generations enjoyed at the same age. A lack of independence like this entails sacrifices and tolls. The most well-known and obvious is the delay in finding a stable relationship and, therefore, in deciding to form a family unit. And, as a consequence, the renunciation or postponement, often forced by the situation, of having children. The low birth rate in Catalonia, which continues to worsen, has much to do with this social dysfunction.

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The promise of Salvador Isla of having built 50,000 homes in Catalonia by 2030, along with the reinstatement of the tripartite Barris Plan, raises expectations and questions. Obviously, he will have to serve another term as president to achieve this. Housing policies are not improvised and require at least a decade.

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Catalan football is no stranger to housing drama, and especially the smaller clubs below the Second Division, are suffering. The most affected are the technical secretaries, especially those from Barcelona and the surrounding areas, who are working to build squads that perform well with little money and local players. "It affects us a lot. Resources are limited, and we have to rationalize them. As a general rule, we focus on signing Catalan players who don't need housing, because renting an apartment is a very significant expense," says Josep Maria Gené, European sporting director. which has risen to First RFEF, the third national division, with one of the lowest budgets in the Second RFEF.

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Dazzled by Disney's cardboard cutout London BridgePedestrians strolling west-east along the south bank of the River Thames don't usually pay much attention to a building on their right. It's a kind of large glass bubble, with 18,000 square meters of usable space, which at the time of its inauguration in 2001 was held up as a model of futurism and sustainability. Norman Foster was its architect.

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This weekend we explained to ARA the problems with the management of public housing in Barcelona, now that the goal is for rapid growth and the preservation of public ownership. This is one facet of the housing crisis we are experiencing. But there are others, of course. And among them, one of the most extreme is the one that affects the most vulnerable segment of society. If the City Council has a problem with its public housing stock—both when allocating housing and maintaining the properties—it also has a problem with the need to house underprivileged people evicted from their homes and forced to live on the streets. Furthermore, the capital often attracts metropolitan citizens who cannot find support in their municipalities.

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The housing crisis in Barcelona makes the front page of the international edition of the newspaper The New York Times, with a photograph of the Orsola House to illustrate a report entitled "City of Lost Homes and Hope" (City of lost homes and hope, in English). In its online version, the article also points out in the headline that the Catalan capital has become "ground zero for Europe's housing dilemma."

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Turning to the idea of public housing, we read in the ARA that the Trilla report does not propose that it be stopped, but that "different developers can group the public housing that corresponds to them in the same block, in the same neighborhood, but not within the free market promotions that they do." The Association of Developers of Catalonia asked, recently, that "in mixed housing there are entrances for the poor and entrances for the rich." I always remember that one day, visiting a friend with money, the doorman let me and my daughter in through the service entrance. It made us laugh a lot, and we pretended that I was the seamstress. My grandfather explained to me that the poor, at school (he was one), had to stand in a separate line and the priests called them like this: "The soup ones!" Hence the expression "the silly soup".

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We have seen it with Casa Orsola. Another episode, this time with a happy ending for the tenants and many questions about the future of the other Casas Orsola in Barcelona. One flower does not make a summer. Every day we explain a residential crisis with many facets, with a very wide range of cases. Today we report the sad reality of a vocational training student – a very good student – of Moroccan origin who has had to live on the street: the help of the teachers has saved him and now he is waiting for a more stable solution. It is an extreme case. Others are much more common and less dramatic, but equally worrying: many young people from middle-class families (understood as a wide range of others) who cannot emancipate themselves because prices are skyrocketing. The limits of the stressed areas have slowed the rise, but it is not enough. The supply does not grow. Tourism and foreign investors continue to strain the market upwards. And a significant volume of empty apartments remains.

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