Spain tackles housing ‘social emergency’ as rents double

Blanca Castro puts on the helmet of a manufacturer before opening the door to his kitchen. Inside, the ceiling has a large hole flowing from the water and it seems that it could collapse at any time.

Because the kitchen is unusable, Blanca must wash her dishes in the bathtub, and she improvised a kitchen area with a gas campsite stove in a corner of her living room.

Many of his tenant colleagues in this building near Madrid station in Atocha have similar problems. They say that the company owner of the building has ceased to respond to basic maintenance requests in recent months, because it has informed them that it will not renew their rental contracts.

“The current rental bubble encourages many large owners to do what they do here,” explains Blanca. “What is to get rid of the current tenants who have been here for a long time, in order to have short -term tourist apartments, or simply to increase rent.”

Blanca and his tenant colleagues have sworn to stay in the building despite what they consider efforts to push them by the owners, who were not available to comment on this article.

The rental contracts last five years, during which the rent is set, but this area of ​​the center of Madrid has seen the accommodation costs rush in recent years.

“For another house like this [in this area]I should pay the double or more what I pay now, “says Blanca.” It is not viable. “”

She and her neighbors are among the millions of Spaniards who suffer from the consequences of a housing crisis caused by the spiral of rental costs.

While wages have increased by around 20% over the past decade, average rental in Spain has doubled during the same period. There was an increase of 11% compared to last year only, according to the figures provided by the Idealist of the real estate portal, and the accommodation has become the greatest concern of the Spanish.

This also generates anger, the Spaniards going to the street to demand measures from the authorities to make accommodation more affordable. On Saturday April 5, thousands of people are expected to protest in Madrid and dozens of other cities.

A report from the Spanish central bank has revealed that almost 40% of families who rent now spend more than 40% of their income for their accommodation.

“The current problem is a huge imbalance between supply and demand,” said Juan Villen, of Idealista. “The demand is very good, the economy increases a lot, but the supply decreases very quickly.”

Mr. Villen offers the example of Barcelona, ​​where rental increases have become notorious. While nine families were in competition to rent each property of the city five years ago, this number increased to 54. The rental costs during this period increased by 60%, he adds.

“We have to build more properties,” said Villen. “And on the rental side, we need more people arranged to rent their properties or buy properties, renovate them and put them on the rental market.”

The central government has described the situation as “a social emergency” and agrees that a lack of supply leads to the crisis. Last year, the Ministry of Housing estimated that the country needed between 600,000 and one million new houses over the next four years to meet demand.

This need for more accommodation has been partially pushed by the arrival of immigrants who have joined the labor market and help stimulate Economic Growth in Spain. The ministry also underlined a lack of social housing which, at 3.4% of the total supply, is among the lowest in Europe.

In 2007, at the height of a real estate bubble of property, more than 600,000 houses were built in Spain. But high construction costs, the lack of available land and a shortage of labor have all been factors in the restriction of construction in recent years, with just under 100,000 houses completed in 2024.

The government has taken measures to encourage construction, distribute land for the construction of affordable houses, while trying to ensure that public housing is not found on the private market, which has been a problem in the past.

But the Socialist Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, also expressed his desire to intervene on the market in order to master the rental prices.

During a recent event to mark the opening of 218 low -rent apartments in the southern city of Seville, he said that the Spanish “want us to attack, they want the housing market to work according to the law of reason, social justice, not the jungle law; they want to ensure that the funds and speculators of Vulture do not do everything they like”.

The central government and a number of local administrations have identified short -term tourist housing in the problem. Last year, the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and several cities on the continent saw demonstrations by the inhabitants against the number of tourists increasing, with their impact on the rental costs of the main complaint.

Several town hall have responded by announcing plans to restrict the granting of tourist permit, while Barcelona goes further, revoking the licenses of all 10,000 short -term recorded apartments in the city by 2028.

The Government of Sánchez has also advanced Parliament a law on housing, which includes a ceiling on rentals in so -called “high voltage” areas where prices are worse. Political resistance has indicated that legislation is so far only implemented in the northern regions of the Basque Country, Navare and Catalonia, and its success is open to debate.

The regional and central governments led by the socialists indicated a 3.7% drop in rental costs in the “high -voltage” areas of Catalonia since the introduction of the ceiling a year ago, Barcelona having experienced a decrease of 6.4%.

However, criticisms warn that the rental ceiling has frightened the owners and caused the thousands of property on the market.

“On the offer side, the problem is that all the measures taken by local or national governments go against the owners,” said Villen. “Even people who made new construction properties at the end sold their properties because they do not want to enter the rental market.”

Another initiative proposed by the central government which has aroused a debate is a tax up to 100% on the properties purchased by non-residents from outside the EU, on the grounds that these houses are often hardly inhabited. It is a measure which, if it were deployed, would strongly affect British buyers.

The conservative opposition accused the government of being too heavy with its approach. However, as the audience of the public is based on this issue, there are many others who want the country’s leaders to act much more sharply.

Gonzalo Álvarez, of the inhindoato of inhilino investigations, an organization that camps for the rights of tenants, applies that a shortage of houses available is a problem, but insists that construction is not the answer.

“There is a lack of housing because the houses are diverted – on the one hand tourist apartments, and on the other hand all the empty apartments belonging to the funds of Vautour and the Banks,” he said. “It is therefore not necessary to build more, it is not necessary. But the accommodation that we were diverted.”

Its organization hopes that the government imposes compulsory drastic reductions in rent on the owners and threatens to orchestrate a national strike by tenants who would see participants refusing to pay their rent.

“THE [central and local] Governments do not set any limits, “explains Mr. Álvarez.” So who’s going? We will have to do it. “”