The Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Nadia Calviño, have agreed to step up cooperation between the two institutions in the area of public housing and have agreed on the need to develop an effective housing policy, a common challenge in many European countries.
Collboni and Calviño met at City Hall on Monday 28 October for a working meeting on housing. The EIB President welcomed the fact that housing is one of the City Council’s priorities, while the Mayor recalled that Barcelona “has been a pioneering city in adopting measures both at the level of price control and in prioritising residential use, through the recovery of tourist housing and the increase in housing production”.
Afterwards, they visited the industrialised social housing at 22 Binèfar Street, in the La Verneda i la Pau neighbourhood (Sant Martí district). This building, built in an industrialised way in an area undergoing urban transformation, has 24 rented flats for young people, which were handed over on 5 October.
Collboni, Calviño and the rest of the institutional delegation visited the outside of the new building and one of the flats. The City Council has invested more than EUR 3.7 million in its construction, 40% of which was financed by the EIB.
The cooperation between the two institutions is centred on two operational financing contracts in favour of the Municipal Institute of Housing and Renovation of Barcelona (IMHAB), for an amount of more than EUR 171.5 million, to be executed between 2017 and 2025. These contracts make it possible to finance 50% of the total cost of developments such as this one in Binèfar Street or ‘Illa Glòries’.