Joan Clos: "Not a single euro of public money should go toward housing construction."

The former mayor of Barcelona, ​​​​former minister and former executive director of UN-Habitat, Joan Clos (Parets del Vallès, 1949), has just published the book Social and affordable housing (Asymmetric Editions) Considers that the solution to the housing problem is not being adequately addressed.

— The proposals to build 20,000, 50,000, or 200,000 homes are irrelevant. At least 20% of the current housing stock will be built. In Catalonia, the problem isn't 50,000 homes, it's 1.5 million.

And how is this done?

— We're overly focused on building and finding land quickly, but many have planning difficulties. The first thing we need to do is take all these plots, review their planning status, and issue a decree-law of urgent measures to process their urban adaptation within three months.

Is this enough?

— No. A second problem is that there isn't enough urban development for social housing. We need to build roofs, not land. Because the problem isn't building social housing where people don't want to live; the problem is that it needs to be built in Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Seville, Zaragoza, Granada, Bilbao, and so on.

What does he propose?

— You can achieve buildable land for social housing if you increase density, because otherwise, the trend is to urbanize rural land to grow with a population density of 2,000 per square kilometer. And this is an attack on sustainability. That's why I propose modifying the density as an urgent measure and that over the next ten years the increased buildable land and density be used exclusively for social housing.

Does this mean building skyscrapers in Barcelona?

— No. The current density of Barcelona city is 16,000 inhabitants per square kilometer of urban land. The density of the rest of the metropolitan area as a whole is 3,000. By increasing this figure to 7,500—half that of Barcelona—we could build twice as many homes as currently built. This is urban planning.

Fewer houses and more buildings.

— Of course. We should move to a four- or five-tier model, which would have already doubled the density of the metropolitan area.

That's why infrastructure is necessary. Is the metropolitan area ready to double the population?

— Of course. We're reforming metropolitan transport, we're transferring Renfe, we're connecting Vallès and Baix Llobregat with the L8 line... We're investing heavily in metropolitan transport. The problem is that there are towns and cities that don't want social housing because they say they have too much of it.

Are there cities that don't want to grow?

— No. Low density is a petty-bourgeois aspiration. It's the urban planning model that the Generalitat (Catalan government) has championed for many years. I'd love to live with a density of 2,000 inhabitants per square kilometer, with a small house and a swimming pool. But then let's not say we'll build social housing.

One of the problems is that it is often difficult for private individuals to build social housing.

— Ninety-five percent of social housing is built by the private sector because, when the construction cycle was declining, it was the way they maintained their productive structure with lower returns. But since the 2008 crisis, public administrations stopped investing in promoting social housing, and everything stopped. In any case, we shouldn't spend public money on construction.

No?

— Not a single euro of public funds should go toward housing construction. This is immobilizing public capital; it's an economic outrage. What should be done is a concession, as was done with the highways. That is, the concessionaire who builds the apartment and for a few years—20, 30, 50, or 80—is guaranteed to collect the 700 euro rent. The financial difficulty lies in the fact that a large proportion of those who have the right to subsidized housing can't afford 700 euros, only 200, 300, or 400. This is where we should spend public funds, financing this difference. What the family can't afford, the government should subsidize.

In the book he also calls for a redesign of the administrative structure.

— A professionalized administration is necessary for managing public housing policy. It's not very difficult now, to achieve social integration.

Should the administration be more interventionist?

— Much more. And the mix that must be achieved in each building doesn't come solely from the list of economic priorities. It comes from the mix of various criteria that must be established. In Singapore and Austria, for example, the administration allocates housing based on social, economic, and, in the case of Singapore, even religious composition. There, there is a significant conflict between Hindus, Chinese, and Muslims, and the administration requires each building to achieve a mix.

One problem that is rarely discussed is the poor maintenance of public housing.

— If you have a good social mix, maintenance isn't a problem. In Austria, you don't know if your neighbor is the one who pays the full rent or if it's subsidized.

Here we heard a spokesperson for the developers talking about creating separate access points to the buildings.

— This goes against making a policy that works.

You're critical of rental price regulation. Why?

— It changes prices in the short term, but not structurally. Urban planning does this by increasing the housing supply. What restricts supply in Spain right now is that urban planning laws are based on criteria from thirty years ago.

In Barcelona, the elimination of 10,000 tourist apartments was cited as one of the solutions to the housing crisis. What do you think?

— It may be a temporary measure that can help, but let's be serious. If you obtain a planning permit, the owner has many options besides offering affordable rentals. Will you prohibit them from selling? Will you force them to build social housing? How? As an emergency measure to achieve an impact of 10,000 more apartments in the housing supply, fine. But this should solve the problem... No way.