When the rent rises in Barcelona, ”important flows of residential mobility from the capital to L’Hospitalet”. This is how the city council of the second city of Catalonia has proven it a thousand times. This law of communicating real estate vessels is well known by all the metropolitan mayors, from terrace, who are suddenly faced with the need to have more flats at affordable prices to be able to welcome people who emigrate from Barcelona due to high housing prices and their own neighbors, victims when they want to become independent from an unwanted rise in prices.
From L’Hospitalet they point out that in 2019, when rental prices peaked, Almost 7,000 people from Barcelona moved their homes to the city, which also leads to an increase in the price of leases. The lack of a public housing stock is one of the main causes of the high rental price in large cities, given that in many municipalities public and/or protected homes barely account for between 1% and 2% of the total.
To reverse this situation, large municipalities in the Barcelona area are promoting, among other measures, protected urban developments that help lower prices. Even so, from L’Hospitalet they assure that “it is almost impossible to reach the 15% urban solidarity (percentage of public housing in relation to the total park) established by law so that the public sector has influence over the market, but at the metropolitan level we can do it & rdquor ;.
In the same line it is expressed Christian Carneadosixth deputy mayor of Badalona, which says that the objective is for Badalona to have a park of public flats divided into social emergency housing, social rental housing and protected housing. To achieve this, Carneado stresses that the collaboration of all administrations is necessary. Thus, he affirms that Badalona has the “determination & rdquor; from mobilize seven million euros of investment to build public housing.
Promotions on both sides of Barcelona
Right now, in L’Hospitalet there are eight promotions of homes underway, with 721 subsidized homes planned. Of these, 21 will be dotacional for young people, 506 are part of the Municipal Land Heritage, and will be rental protection, and 194 will be VPO. In the city there are currently 3,422 homes with some type of protection, 396 of which have been built during the last mandate.
With a view to the next mandate, the City Council of Santa Coloma has signed an agreement with the Metropolitan Institute for the Promotion of Sol (IMPSOL), through which it cedes plots to develop public housing actions. In this framework will be developed two housing developments protected in Sant Pasqual, in El Fondo, with 90 homes, and in the Front Fluvial del Raval, with 168 more for rent.
Thus, the total public housing obtained during the current mandate will be 153 homes. The forecast is to finish the 2023-27 mandate with 378 new public housingwhich would mean that in two terms the city would have gained 531 public housing units and, with this figure, the 1% public housing in the total housing.
Protected housing in Vallès
for the mayor of Sabadell, Marta Farres, difficulties in accessing housing represent “one of the most serious problems in our society”. “Sabadell is one of the cities of our size with the largest municipally owned rental housing, but we know that the figure is insufficient. That is why we have a very ambitious plan to build 525 homes in the coming years, that will increase the number of municipal flats for protected rental by 34%”, remarks Farrés.
As for municipal housing, the council is building two protected rental promotions. These two are the first of the eight promotions that the City Council will initiate, through Vimusa or SBD Lloguer Social, between 2021 and 2023, and which will have a total of 528 protected rental flats. Likewise, a complex for the elderly will be built in La Roureda. In total, of a park of some 80,000 homes in the city, 2% are public protected rentals.
Lluisa MelgaresDeputy Mayor of the Territory of terraceexplains that the closest promotions planned will be carried out through surface rights: two with a public agreement with the Generalitat (they will mean 206 dwellings) and two with private promoters (other 262), and that in this same mandate they have acquired 253 flats by trial and error. In total, in Terrassa there are 2,824 publicly owned flats, including those belonging to the City Council and the Generalitat.
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On Sant Cugatone of the municipalities with the most expensive rental prices in the state, explain that they have two promotions underway and another 13 proposals of different volume already planned. Francis DuchDeputy Mayor for Housing, explains that one of the main problems encountered is the lack of public land to be able to develop public housing projects.
However, in Sant Cugat they are also working on defining what will be the city’s first ‘eco-neighbourhood’, where 50% of the homes will be VPO and will have a Approximate volume of more than 1,900 homes in the VPO regime. In total, it is planned to increase the affordable rental housing stock by 3,000 new homes, which will have different degrees of protection.