Barcelona is Paris now

Barcelona has a serious housing problem. It would be a good idea to create incentives for landlords to set rental prices close to some reference price index, as long as it is reasonable. Intervention in the market would be useless

Esther Vera
2 min
Moltes persones que no aconsegueixen vendre un pis han decidit últimament posar-lo al mercat de lloguer.

It’s half past nine in the morning. A group of people, some wearing green PAH[1] t-shirts, are gathered in Barcelona’s Eixample district. The corner of Carrer de Còrsega and Passeig de Sant Joan. A thirty-something woman who has found herself unemployed and her young daughter are waiting to be evicted from a 100m2 flat they were paying 800€ a month for. The lease contract is in her father’s name; she moved there to look after him. The landlord isn’t renewing the lease. He could be getting a lot more for it.

It’s half past three on the same day. Not far away, in a quiet Gràcia street, six young people are viewing a flat to rent at the same time. It’s listed at 1,200€ a month. It’s been done up, it’s got two bedrooms and access to part of the rooftop terrace. The pressure of the simultaneous visits pays off. The first girl, from France, puts down a deposit and reserves the flat. Two other viewers make higher offers, with payment in advance.

Barcelona has a serious housing problem. In 1960 there were 300,000 rental flats in the city. In 2011, the year of the last census, there were 206,000. The salary drop during the recession, the difficulties of getting access to credit, the arrival of skilled foreign labour, 3-year-long lease contracts and the highly profitable business of renting flats to tourists have led to a situation of scarcity of supply, price hikes and the expulsion of long-term residents. It would be a good idea to create incentives for landlords to set rental prices close to some reference price index, as long as it is reasonable. Intervention in the market would be useless. But the solution requires an ambitious, cooperative, urgent policy to build a pool of council rental flats.

______________

Translator’s note:

[1] PAH (Plataforma d'Afectats per la Hipoteca, “Platform for People Affected by Mortgages”) was set up in Barcelona in 2009. It is an organisation that campaigns for housing rights and in support of people threatened with eviction.

stats