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The Generalitat promotes the addition of 10,000 new homes to the social rental stock this 2023. This figure will represent a growth of 18% compared to the current park, numbered at 55,000.
Promotions of affordable rental flats will be located in the most densely populated areas or with more difficulty accessing housing. The Government’s intention is to move forward to reach social rent levels equivalent to the European average. For the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, “access to housing is not a luxury, it is a basic right” and essential for a cohesive society. “With the push for these 10,000 new flats, we are making an important leap forward”, adds Aragonès, at the same time underlining “the paradigm shift” that the Government is carrying out in public housing policies.
Of these 10,000 new social rental flats, more than a third, specifically 3,655, will be owned by the Generalitat. And they will be obtained through two ways. On the one hand, the direct promotion that Incasòl does. And on the other, the direct purchase of homes already built; either through the exercise of the right of trial and withdrawal; or through the acquisition of already completed and empty or occupied developments, mostly in the hands of financial institutions.
Apart from the public park, the Government also wants to give a strong impetus to the promotion of social rental housing by third parties and collaborate in this way with social agents, cooperatives and promoters. One of the main developments in this area is the transfer of public land, owned by Incasòl, for the construction of more than 1,000 homes. “With the delegated promotion we guarantee that land ownership will always remain public and that the homes will also always be social rent. Our housing policies aim for permanence and for the social rental park to be so forever”, emphasizes the Councilor of Territory, Juli Fernàndez i Olivares.
Aid is also planned for private development to promote more than 5,100 flats, which will be financed with the more traditional lines of the Catalan Institute of Finance and with European funds. In addition to this, this year also foresees the transfer of homes from the private market to the Generalitat, for a certain period of time. In this case, they are homes given by financial institutions or private owners through the different programs managed by the Catalan Housing Agency. With this line of action, it is expected to obtain 1,100 more homes.
Councilor Juli Fernàndez y Olivares emphasizes that it is about using “all the tools we have and new tools, such as the direct purchase or transfer of public land to build housing”.
The Government has currently identified 82 municipalities where social rental housing will be built, either directly by the Generalitat or with some type of public aid for the promotion of social rental housing or through the transfer of public land. A number that will continue to increase as agreements are signed with more councils and it becomes clear where the purchase of already built homes will be made or they will be acquired by trial and error.
For the promotion of these 10,000 new social rental homes, the Generalitat will invest at least 350 million euros directly and a further 180 million in grants. “We know that we have a lot of work to do and that we are far away”, acknowledges the president Pere Aragonès, but “we are moving in the right direction, reaching the whole country, with public rental housing initiatives that will respond to a minimum of 82 municipalities and that will contribute to ensuring that no one is left behind”.
