The reality: 39% of Barcelona residents and their neighbors in the metropolitan area use more than 40% of their income to pay for housing, be it rent or a mortgage, and prices continue to rise. The lack of supply constrains the market and the outlook is not optimistic: it is estimated that until 2050 the demand will be 475,000 new homes. “The problem is so big that it can only be solved by building, and a lot of it,” maintains Jaume Oliu, one of the coordinators of Barcelona Global’s latest report on how to generate affordable housing. The entity demands an acceleration plan from the administration, that the procedures for approving projects and granting licenses are more agile and that strategies are established to guarantee the economic viability of the projects.
The solution will have to be found outside of Barcelona, ??where there is more land available: “The problem of affordable housing – which requires less than 30% of a citizen’s income – must be approached from a perspective and a metropolitan vision, with agreed planning”, reiterated yesterday Maite Barrera, president of the entity, during the presentation of the report. The document is the result of six months of work in which 56 experts have participated, including Lluís Cases ( Garrigues), Anna Gener ( Savills), Pau Pérez de Acha ( Sareb), Marcel Prunera ( Guinot Prunera), Manel Rodíguez ( Salas ) or Carme Trilla (president of the Metropolitan Housing Observatory and the Habitat3 Foundation).
“We have worked on structural measures, analyzing what can be done in the metropolitan region”, pointed out Trilla. The document concludes that it is possible to generate the necessary amount of affordable housing – a total of around 25,000 flats – within five years, as long as the Administration is involved. How? managing residential land that is already classified and simplifying the regulatory framework. “We need to go faster, we can’t wait ten years to start building”, insisted Jaume Oliu, general director of Raset Ventures.
“It is necessary to produce and build, starting from the metropolitan PDU (urban master plan), which must be approved soon to develop better residential land as soon as possible,” added Carme Conesa, director general of Barcelona Global, with reference to the Baix Llobregat PDU, which foresees almost 16,000 homes, the Tres Xemeneies PDU (1,783 homes) the Cerdanyola Directional Center (5,377 homes), the Badalona PDU, (with 339 homes in the ARE Estrella and 176 more in the ARE Sant Crist) or the PDU Montcada i Reixac, with more than 2,000 homes in the ARE Can Duran, a plan that the City Council is now reviewing.
“There are many promoters who want to make a living, but many times urban planning does not work… there are many technical requirements that involve a lot of work, small municipalities are sometimes overwhelmed, then the project goes through the commission of “Urbanism and there are conflicts of interest…”, pointed out Manel Rodríguez, director general of Salas.
The report addresses other measures to alleviate the lack of housing, such as empty flats or changes of use, but their contribution is not significant, considering the magnitude of the problem”, said Oliu. Despite this, Trilla did point out that the misuse of seasonal rentals contributes to an increase in the price of rentals.
