With the extraordinary skill that characterizes him and accompanied by his unfailing media entourage, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has in recent days presented three plans for the construction of social housing, aware that this is one of his most exposed flanks in the upcoming municipal and autonomous community elections on May 28th. About ten days ago, he announced that the Spanish government planned to mobilize up to 50,000 homes from the Sareb "bad bank" to dedicate to socially-assisted and affordable rental housing. However, except for 9,000 of these, they will not be immediately available; the rest will have to wait until the next legislature. The first problem with Sánchez's announcement is that in the cities or geographical areas most affected by "stressed" housing prices - of which Barcelona and its metropolitan area comprise a prime example - Sareb does not have a portfolio of apartments that respond to the needs and the promise made, as about 70% of the bank's inventory is in small cities.
Sánchez's announcement, made at a party rally and later before the cabinet, was widely criticized and only received limited media coverage. The Moncloa palace then planned its second news release, which took place seven days ago. The Spanish government would use European Union funds to finance the construction and rehabilitation of 43,000 homes for rent at affordable rates, it was said. A note: these European funds, grouped under the label of Next Generation, are part of the 140,000 million euros from EU coffers intended to assist in Spanish recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. These two goals seem difficult to reconcile, but stranger things have happened. Nothing is yet known about these affordable rents, but the complexity of the formula designed by La Moncloa strategists seems neither transparent nor at all rapid. The money invested would not be articulated as direct assistance, but through public ICO loans to real estate developers.
Thus, adding together the two announcements, we have 93,000 homes, a more than respectable figure. If it were so easy to make housing available to the population most in need, the question is why it had not been done before. It must be because the time left before the elections is only good for announcements and little else. But this Tuesday, in a Senate debate between Sánchez and PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the prime minister put onto the table the construction of another 20,000 public homes on land owned by the Spanish defence ministry. As if it were an auction, the total figure suddenly shot up to beyond 100,000 homes, reaching 113,000, an amount that would be significant if true. But as we know, campaign promises tend to have a short lifespan - you just need to look back through the news archives.
Moreover, these latest 20,000 homes came with a bonus that we did not know until 24 hours later. The land on which these buildings are to be constructed cannot be ceded by the ministry of Defence because the law states they must be sold according to the accepted valuation. In other words, that ministry's budget will increase with the sale, and Spain's national defence thus comes out reinforced, as the minister, Margarita Robles, took the opportunity to explain. It seems like the shell game on La Rambla, the ball is under one of the three matchboxes, but it has been moved so many times that it is hard to know where it is. For the ministry of Defence, it is a good operation, Robles pointed out. The sleight-of-hand tricks of Sánchez are really difficult to follow, and more rigour would be advisable on an issue of such enormous social sensitivity.