People over 65 years old living in Barcelona have at their disposal, each year that passes, more public housing conditioned and adapted to their needs. This is reflected in the data presented this Tuesday at a meeting, held at the Alí Bei housing development with services for the elderly, between the Barcelona City Council and the Advisory Council for the Elderly of the city. The event was attended by the Councilor for Housing and Rehabilitation of the Barcelona City Council, Lucía Martín.
Housing with services for the elderly are social homes with protected rent, municipally owned, aimed at people over 65 years of age who do not have their own home or, if they do, it is not accessible. Therefore, more and more homes have been conditioned, throughout the city, to make them available to this group, and thus improve their living conditions and maintain their personal autonomy. Specifically, these are buildings with common spaces, with rents of around €450, where users never pay more than 30% of their income in rent.
Up to 475 new homes are under construction
A commitment of the City Council that translates into some quite significant data. The city currently has 1,433 apartments with services for the elderly in full operation, distributed in 24 developments and divided among the different neighborhoods of the city, where the most common user profile is that of a woman of just over 80 years of age who lives alone.
To this number of apartments must be added the 475 homes currently under construction in 6 new developments in the districts of Sant Martí, Sant Andreu, Gràcia, and Eixample, which will be completed in 2023 and 2024, bringing Barcelona’s total to 2,000 apartments and 3,000 people in a matter of two years.
This 33% increase will represent an investment of more than 60 million euros for the City Council. In addition to this figure, the City Council also assumes the cost of subsidies for rental subsidies, and the revitalization of common spaces, among others.
The trend in the construction of housing with services for the elderly has not stopped growing since 2003 when the first 98 homes were built in two developments. Since then, the numbers have progressively increased year after year. So far, Sant Martí (288), Ciutat Vella (236), and Nou Barris (236) are the three districts with the most homes of this type, followed by Sant Andreu (155), Sants-Montjuïc (149) and Horta-Guinardó (146).