Catalonia accumulated a construction deficit of 172,000 homes between 2014 and 2020, according to a study by the Center for Demographic Studies of the UAB, which has generated “a disconnection between the supply and demand for housing” which explains mainly the price increases suffered by flats, both for purchase and for rent. “There is starting to be not only a problem of housing accessibility but, for the first time in more than 50 years, of availability”, points out Juan Antonio Módenes, professor of Geography at the UAB and author of the study.
According to the centre, this deficit exists because the number of homes that are built is much lower than the number of households that are created, which forces, for example, to share a flat. “It’s a problem that happens all over Spain, concentrated in the areas with the most economic dynamism”, points out Módenes, such as in Barcelona, ??Madrid and the Basque Country. Thus, preliminary studies indicate that in Spain as a whole the housing deficit exceeds 400,000 units.
In the six years of the study in Catalonia, only 50,000 homes were built, while 222,000 households were created there, 175,000 of which were of immigrant origin. “The balance of the creation of homes by people of Spanish origin has been neutral: those that are destroyed by death exceed the homes formed by young natives who are emancipated or those that arise from divorces. But the arrival of immigrants creates new homes, and in this group they are not destroyed by death, because it is generally a group of young people”.
Modenes emphasizes that immigration is cyclical – linked to the evolution of the economy – and that is why it is difficult to take it into account when planning society’s needs. Thus, the Territorial Sectoral Housing Plan estimated that Catalonia needed to build 25,000 homes each year to cover the growth of the population, and finally in those years more than 36,000 homes were created annually, with great variations between the 9,000 in 2013 and 45,000 in 2019. “The supply of new housing and demand only match at the low points of the economic cycle”, he points out.
The study highlights that the deficit in housing construction in Catalonia is becoming structural. Before 2008, it was already happening in the metropolitan area, although in Catalonia as a whole construction exceeded the creation of homes, because thousands of homes were second homes. With the bursting of the real estate bubble, the creation of homes fell to practically zero, because immigration slowed down, and construction also came to a standstill. But since 2014, construction has not kept pace with economic growth.
Módenes acknowledges that “due to ignorance” a part of public opinion continues to be against facilitating housing construction, which, at the same time, makes public administrations less likely to facilitate the works. “There is a perception that the population is growing little, but it is not taken into account that the number of households is increasing” (due to immigration, the increase in separations and the increasing longevity). Similarly, he points out, “the idea has remained that there are many empty properties, but they are homes in poorly located areas or commercial premises. The lack of housing in Barcelona has meant that in areas within a radius of 50 kilometers of Barcelona, ??the number of second residences has fallen by half, even in coastal areas: they are filled with people displaced from the capital”. Likewise, Modenes points out, it must be taken into account that “part of the older housing stock must be replaced, which have become obsolete and even if it is only 0.3% per year, with a stock of 3 million of homes, there are thousands of them”.
The study by the Center for Demographic Studies highlights that immigration, with its cyclical peaks, must force a change in public housing policies. “Public action must ensure that the new offer is sensitive to demand immediately or with the minimum possible delay, perhaps compensating for the positive and negative oscillations of the cycles”, he points out.
