More social housing? A critical analysis of social housing provision in Spain.

Abstract

Since the 1950s Spain has developed a set of policies aimed at stimulating ownership through subsidies mainly in the form of interest rates or mortgage quotas to developers and households neglecting other forms of housing provision, for instance social rent. That system provided one off benefit to the developer and/or the purchaser and could not be reused to help other households. The financial crisis in 2008 evidenced the weakness of the Spanish housing system in providing affordable and secure shelter by means other than homeownership. The existent housing provision system failed to avoid the large number of evictions while simultaneously banks became owners of a large amount of empty dwellings. To some extent, the severity of the situation exerted considerable political pressure to devise a new framework for action to alleviate the housing problem in Spain. In this paper based on the post -crisis evidence we argue the need to reformulate approaches to provide adequate and affordable housing for certain collectives in Spain.