Social rental housing in the Eixample of Barcelona, in a 2020 image.Albert Garcia (EL PAÍS)
The President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, announced this Friday that Catalonia will receive 10,000 social rental housing in 82 municipalities and in just three years: by 2026. To do this, he will activate the machinery of the Catalan Land Institute (Incasòl). that of the housing agency and also has the private initiative: Because of the 10,000 protected rents, the plan delegates 5,126 to private subsidies that receive public subsidies. The planned investments are 350 million euros directly for advertising and acquisitions and 180 million in grants.
With this plan, Aragonès responds to the housing shortage that has plagued large cities for years, where rent prices are driving residents first to the periphery and then to neighboring communities. In addition, the mayor of cities like Barcelona, Ada Colau, often reproaches that the council has focused on expanding the park, but that the Generalitat has barely built 40 apartments in recent years, and demands that the Regional administration provides shelters for emergency departments. The government has presented the list of municipalities, which includes the four capitals (Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona and Lleida), but has not indicated how many floors are planned in each municipality.
More information
A public Pyrrhic rental park would add the 10,000 to the current 55,000 (2% of the total park), an 18% growth. Of the total, 2,155 are expected to come from direct public funding; 1,500 are bought by the government by trial and error or by big forks they have empty; 1,062 are established by foundations or cooperatives on public land; 5,126 private companies with subsidies from Next Generation Funds (3,229) or from the Generalitat itself and the Catalan Institute of Finance (ICF); and another 1,100 would be procured on the private market through assignment agreements with large owners such as banks, mutual funds or sareb.
Regarding the Generalitat’s own promotion, the technicians assure that the Catalan administration has set in motion a slow-moving apparatus and in recent decades has dealt with more emergencies or construction situations due to moves than adding new housing in public parks. The Incasòl will use the interest generated by the 1,500 million euros it has as guarantees deposited by the tenants, which can reach 80 million euros per year. The corporation ensures that there are grants of varying degrees of completion: from now on through to agreements with town halls so that they cede plots of land. Apart from the interest generated by deposits, the Incasòl law allows up to 90% of the amount of the bonds to be used for public housing, but this formula is not used.
The Incasòl also plans to buy 1,000 empty homes for the emergency (for which it will allocate 100 million) and the housing agency another 500 (50 million). In this chapter it would be an opportunity to buy housing that the Municipalities of Sareb have located and whose incorporation into the Municipal Park is requested: this is the case of La Pobla de Segur where the Bad Bank has 81 housing and In the municipality there are no apartments for students and some live in caravans. In Catalonia, Sareb has more than a thousand homes.
What affects most is what happens closer. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
subscribe to
Regarding grants to developers, covering different percentages of construction costs but never less than 20%, the Generalitat states that 3,229 will certainly materialize since they already have European funds. As for the rest, they have more demand than supply for help, they claim and specify that the appeals have already been published and it only remains to publish the resolutions.
Follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter