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Catalonia property owners may be forced to rent to low-income tenants

VisitBlanes.com • Item 140 • Posted: May 16, 2010

More articles on this topic: Blanes, Catalonia

VisitBlanes.com — A few years ago a dizzying escalation of housing prices kept low-income families in Catalonia, and throughout Spain, out of suitable homes and apartments.

Nowadays a 20 percent unemployment rate — coupled with stricter credit rules that keep jittery bankers from lending to those who most need the money — continues to keep hundreds of thousands of people in Catalonia alone out of suitable housing.

The Generalitat de Catalunya, Catalonia’s government, is looking into ways to tackle that problem.

Housing Secretary Carme Trilla says that while housing needs have not changed, the circumstances have. When the Generalitat adopted the Law on Housing Rights in 2007 it had devised a plan to tackle a steep rise in prices of flats — at the time a whopping 300% increase in just a decade.

“That left thousands of people out of the market since during the same 10 years salaries increased at a much slower rate,” Trilla explains. “But now that apartments are cheaper those same people can still not afford them, either due to insufficient credit, unemployment or low-income jobs.”

The need for affordable houses is highlighted in the Plan Territorial Sectorial de Vivienda (PTSV) — the Territorial Plan for the Housing Sector, a law proposal drafted by Catalonia’s government.

The report says that in Catalonia 571.000 households needs some form of rent protection or housing subsidy.

As drafted the bill says the Generalitat can tackle the need for housing with a variety of measures to be implemented over the next 10 years.

Among other things, the PTSV includes the following measures:

provide 200,000 young people with financial aid designed to allow them to move into their own apartments as opposed to living with their parents
create 240,000 social housing units
make an effort to provide accommodation for 40,000 elderly people
better the living conditions of 65,000 people, mostly immigrants, who are at risk of social exclusion

Forced Rent

The most controversial aspect of the proposal is the possible enforcement of a ‘forced rent’ measure which would enable the Generalitat to — as a last resort — force property owners to rent out property that has been empty for too long.

The ‘forced rent’ measure was passed as part of the 2007 Housing Rights law.

When a property is kept empty without justification, the government puts the owner on notice. From that point he has two years to find a suitable renter, if necessary with help from local authorities.

If the landlord will not cooperate, or a suitable renter has not been found within the given period of time, the local government may force it to be leased for a period of five years at a set price.

The forced rent approach may be used in the areas with the greatest need. That includes the city of Barcelona and its metropolitan region, the urban areas of Tarragona and surrounding urban areas, and cities like Blanes, Lloret and Roses.

According to the Generalitat Blanes and Lloret de Mar alone need an additional 11,187 apartments each. Yet in reality both towns have more apartments than potential tenants.

Carles Gibert, urban planner in Blanes, says even many promotions have not resulted in the signing of more rental agreements.

“Also, we were close to an agreement with the Government over the building of 40 social housing flats,” he says “But that project has now been postponed due to a lack of financial resources.”

In Lloret it is a similar story. “We have all the apartments you would want,” Teresa Gimeno, owner of real estate agency Planella Bonet told El País. “Never before have we had this many homes on offer. What we need now is customers.” Gimeno company offers flats from 400 Euros a month.

The problem is that many people are out of work. “Without guarantees, no landlord is prepared to rent out his place,” reiterates Mata Madrenas, president of the Association of Real Estate Agents in Girona.
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