Catalonia accumulated a construction deficit of 172,000 homes between 2014 and 2020, according to a study carried out by the Center d’Estudis Demogràfics of the UAB, which has produced “a disconnection between the supply and demand for housing” that he explains in a large part of the price increases that flats are suffering, both for purchase and for rent. “There is beginning to be not only a problem of accessibility to housing but, for the first time in more than 50 years, of availability,” says Juan Antonio Módenes, professor of Geography at the UAB and author of the study.
According to the center, this deficit occurs because the number of homes that are built is much lower than the number of homes that are created, for example, forcing them to share a flat. “It is a problem that occurs throughout Spain, concentrated in the areas with the greatest economic dynamism”, points out Módenes, such as the surroundings of Barcelona, ??Madrid and the Basque Country. Thus, preliminary studies suggest that in Spain as a whole the housing deficit exceeds 400,000 units.
In the six years of the study, only 50,000 homes were built in Catalonia, while 222,000 homes were created, 175,000 of them of immigrant origin. “The balance of home creation of people of Spanish origin has been neutral: those that are destroyed by death exceed the homes formed by young natives who become emancipated or those that arise from divorces. But the arrival of immigrants creates new homes, and in this group they are not destroyed due to death, because it is a group generally of young people”.
Módenes points out that immigration is cyclical –linked to the evolution of the economy– and for this reason it is difficult to take it into account when planning the needs of society. Thus, the Plan Territorial Sectorial de l’Habitatge 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 large variations between the 9,000 in 2013 and the 45,000 in 2019. “Only the supply of new housing and the demand coincide 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 already occurred in the metropolitan area, although in the whole of Catalonia 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 stopped, 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 the construction of housing, which in turn makes public administrations less inclined to facilitate the works. “There is a perception that the population is growing little, but it is not taken into account that households are increasing” (due to immigration, the increase in separations and greater longevity). Likewise, he points out, “the idea has remained that there are many empty properties, but these are homes in poorly located areas or commercial premises. The lack of housing in Barcelona has meant that in locations within a radius of 50 kilometers from Barcelona the number of second homes has fallen by half, even in coastal areas: they are filled with displaced people from the capital”. Likewise, Módenes points out, it must be taken into account that “part of the older housing stock has to be replaced”, which have become obsolete “and even if it is only 0.3% per year, with a stock of 3 million homes There are thousands of them.”
The UAB study highlights that immigration, with its cyclical peaks, must force a change in public housing policies. “Public action must guarantee that the new offer is responsive to demand immediately or with the minimum possible delay, perhaps compensating for the positive and negative oscillations of the cycles,” he points out.
