In Spain hardly 10% protected case of those raised in 1997. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez focused much of his election campaign on public housing rent at affordable prices, as well as facilitate the purchase of young people through government guarantees. But the current situation is far from the one that existed in the 1980s and 1990s.

The last decade, after the 2008 crisis, has meant a real recession, which is now beginning to recover, and new housing law published this Thursday State official bulletin (BOE) intends to activate. The construction of subsidized housing barely makes up 10% of the total number of homes under construction at the moment, compared to 8%, which marked the beginning of the first legislature of Sanchez.

Of course, its construction has experienced 87% growth since 2017, an exercise that marked the low of recent decades. In 1985, 114,067 subsidized houses were built, representing 67.2% of all housing built. In other words, the production of subsidized housing has even surpassed the construction of free housing. But its volume decreased in 1991 by 50%. After another six years of recovery, they began to fall again until they reached the current threshold, the lowest values ​​in the last forty years.

Data Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Development (Mitma) show how more than 84,000 subsidized houses were built in 1997, compared to 9,200 in 2022. This is barely 10% of the houses that existed at that time. It must be borne in mind that the total number of built housing is currently much lower. Last year, 89,156 homes were built, compared to 309,360 at the time.

The new Law states that currently “there are major imbalances between new construction and activities rehabilitation and between home ownership and property rent”. Added to this, the rule says, “Public housing parks for rent, absolutely not enough to meet the needs of those individuals and households who find it more difficult to access the market due to their limited economic opportunities.”

31.5% of homes built between 1962 and 2020 were subsidized homes, meaning about 5.7 million homes were promoted through some form of scheme. public defense. But at the same time, “for the most part, despite significant public efforts made to promote and build it, they ceased in a relatively short time to be subject to any type of sale or lease restriction,” the new law warns. .

At this time, the state authorities made a choice in favor of home ownershipMeanwhile he social rent played a secondary role. We have one of the largest housing stocks per capita in the entire European Union, albeit with a very low ratio of public apartments per inhabitant.

After the implementation of the Housing Plan for 2013-2016. fiscal adjustments associated with austerity policies it was implied that the protected ratings had fallen to anecdotal levels. Then came the final phasing out of subsidized housing construction in favor of restoration and private rentals. And some Autonomous Communities have decided to sell assets to the private sector.

“15 years ago, 10 times more VPO was built than today. Such a sharp decline leads us to add that an urgent change in housing policy is needed. (…) Housing policy must be in place to support families who allocate 40% of their income to housing costs,” the report says Ombudsman published in 2019.

The latest statistical bulletin of the Housing and Land Observatory (depends on Mitma) states that Spain is in position number 18 of the European Union With 2.5% social housing relative to the total number of buildings in the country in 2020. The existing public fund of social housing in Spain is located in the vicinity 290,000 social housingas stated in the aforementioned bulletin. Of these, 180,000 houses are owned by autonomous communities, and another 110,000 houses are municipally owned.

Also collect the ratio between the prices of free and subsidized housing. “Noted that the average price of the former is currently 51% higher than that of the latter,” the text notes.

“Infinite owners were able to embezzle and speculate on public resources, which at that time were allocated to facilitate the construction of their subsidized homes; and worse, it prevented the public sector from acquiring housing resources that could meet the needs of future generations,” the Fundación Alternativas study explains.

The new text, approved with the opposition of the PP shields, is that subsidized housing cannot be sold for a minimum period of thirty years, except in exceptional cases. In addition, the law increases the required land reserve for subsidized housing on development land from 30% to 40% and from 10% to 20% on unconsolidated urban land.

The new law also introduces the concept affordable affordable housing, “as a necessary indicator for increasing supply in the short term.” “This is a new concept that is being added to subsidized housing as an effective mechanism to increase the supply of housing at affordable prices,” the rule explains.

This is considered privately owned housing, including third sector properties, to the owner of which the Administration provides planned, tax or other benefits in exchange for allocating them habitual residence rented at reduced pricesor any other formula of temporary ownership by people whose income level does not allow them access to a house at a market price.