The acting Ombudsman of Spain, Francisco Fernandez Marugán, has warned that public housing is at historic lows and “is in danger of disappearing completely” if there is not “a rapid and intense change” in public policies in this area.
This has been assured during his participation in the Congress “Building the right to housing”, held in Cáceres on 27 and 28 March and has been organized by the Junta de Extremadura in collaboration with ONU-Habitat.
After pointing out that “15 years ago ten times more protected public housing was built than today”, the Ombudsman blamed this “drastic reduction” in the number of VPO (subsidised homes) owned and rented on budget adjustments.
In his opinion, the austerity measures adopted from 2010 onwards caused “a notorious lack of response to the demand for social housing that had been arising since before the outbreak of the crisis”.
The Ombudsman has explained that, while in the years 2004 to 2009, the number of completed social housing was between 50,000 and 70,000 units per year, from 2011 there was a change of direction, which was even more prominent from 2013. This has meant that in 2017 only 4,938 social flats have been delivered throughout Spain and that this figure has been 5,167 homes in 2018.
This period of regression in housing policy “has led us to be among the European countries with the lowest level of social protection in a good as essential as this,” he stressed.
To correct this imbalance, the Ombudsman considers that public intervention in the market is necessary, through the different instruments available to the different public authorities.
More social renting
Fernandez Marugán also stressed that the economic situation, job instability, low wages or the inability to access financing have made rent the only possible way to access a house for many people.
“Rent is a real necessity,” he said, and proof of this is the rapid growth in renting in some large Spanish cities, especially from the second half of 2017.
As he said, “what we see in the street is a strong demand and a supply with insufficient capacity to respond and yet today lacks a park of social housing for rent”.
For the Ombudsman, the adjustment between supply and demand in the rental housing market could have been softened through public rental housing. Therefore, has been convinced that “new public housing to be built should all be social rental” because, as he explained, “when there is a problem of rental housing supply, public policies should encourage supply and not discourage it.
Prioritizing vulnerable groups
Furthermore, and after recalling that the economic effort required to access housing in Spain, both in terms of ownership and rent, is “excessive”, the Ombudsman has advocated that public policies should focus on reducing the cost of access to housing, advancing in a process of reducing social inequalities.
In this line, he has stressed that it is essential that housing policies are set as an objective to favor low-income families and single-parent families, young people, people who have suffered an eviction, women victims of gender violence and immigrants.
In his opinion, three areas of action are necessary: greater provision of public and social housing; increased transfers to families to pay for housing, also including tax breaks on obtaining supplies (electricity, gas, etc.); and price controls through urban policies.
The Ombudsman has concluded his intervention by insisting on the need to introduce regulatory changes in the Spanish legal system “that crystallize definitively with speed and consensus”, as this will help families with few resources and young people, “so that both can have access to decent housing in the terms established by our Constitution”.
