“Any intervention like this is necessary when the free exercise of supply and demand does not work.” This is how the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, defended the launch of the new digital platform of Casa 47, the State Housing Entity, which starts with an initial offer of 800 available homes. Sánchez has acknowledged that the current real estate market is “broken” and “out of control”, which justifies the State taking an active role to ensure that access to a home is a “realistic aspiration” with “realistic rents for real wages.”
The president highlighted that this new portal serves as a commitment to “never again fall into the mistakes of the past.” He lamented that, in recent decades, millions of protected homes ended up losing their protection and falling into the hands of “vulture funds” due to political decisions that prioritized speculation over human dignity. He also took the opportunity to criticize the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, saying “doing housing policy is not buying a penthouse worth more than 6 million euros for the president of a public government of the moment.” Therefore, he guaranteed that the Casa 47 housing stock will be permanently shielded, so that what is built with the effort and taxes of the citizens can never be privatized or leave the public stock, regardless of changes in the economic or political cycle.
Regarding the conditions of this new residential model, the homes allocated through Casa 47 will have lease contracts of up to 75 years in duration, structured in an initial phase of 14 years and subsequent automatic renewals. In addition, a strict limit is set on the financial effort of tenants: the monthly rent may not exceed 30% of the household income under any circumstances.
Sánchez emphasized that access to these homes will be governed by standards of maximum transparency and fairness. Unlike previous models, applications submitted through the portal – which will soon add another 1,500 homes to its offer – will participate in notarized lotteries to determine the order of allocation. This system seeks to eliminate any kind of favoritism and ensure that all citizens, especially young people and the working middle class, have the same opportunities to access decent housing as an effective right and not as a privilege.
The Prime Minister closed the event More public housing, more affordable housing this Monday in Madrid; where the Casa 47 portal, the State Housing Entity, was presented to search for homes, manage applications, and consult calls.
The Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez, also attended the presentation of the Casa 47 platform, who pointed out a “profound change” in the country’s housing policy to end a historical “anomaly” and “create a public housing stock for the working middle class and Spanish youth.”
She took the opportunity to defend public intervention against speculation through a public tender of 100 million euros for the purchase of private housing intended for affordable rent. Thus, she pointed out that the platform seeks to prevent recent situations in the country from repeating, such as “a development being awarded to councilors, municipal architects, or the children of Popular Party councilors,” she criticized.
During the presentation, the minister detailed key milestones achieved in just nine months of management. Among them, she highlighted the recovery of the heritage of the former Sareb to make available to the public stock “more than 40,000 homes and 2,500 plots”, as well as the mobilization of unused land belonging to other ministries such as Social Security, Interior, and Finance, which already translates into “almost 2,500 homes that are already in process.”
Despite the progress, the minister acknowledged that the effort “is not enough and we will not achieve it if we are not all together signing in the same direction.” In this regard, Rodríguez called attention to the autonomous communities, which hold the main constitutional powers in the matter, and lamented the existence of “two models” of management in the country. While she thanked the collaboration of the autonomous communities that are using all the tools to increase supply and regulate rental prices, she harshly criticized those that have decided “to do nothing” or “call foreign investors to respond to entire neighborhoods.”
