New structural measures are being introduced to boost available residential housing through the recovery of tourist lets for residential use, along with a revamp to the measure of a 30% reserve on new-build homes for use as officially protected housing. The goal is to guarantee the right to housing for everybody and to boost the stock of affordable housing citywide.
The decree approved by the Government of Catalonia on 7 November 2023, on the regulation or tourist accommodation, will be applied in a series of Catalan municipalities where people have problems accessing housing. The move should take away the 10,101 tourist flats which have been conditioned to operate as tourist lets in the city. The measure aims to guarantee the maximum number of flats are for residential use and not for tourism, boosting the city’s housing stock.
The decree law will be applied in full and no new urban planning will be approved which declares permanent residential homes as compatible with tourist uses. This should mean that five years after the law is applied, all tourist lets in the city will disappear and be prohibited, leaving no tourist flats in Barcelona in November 2028.
In addition, through the Special Plan on Urban Tourist Accommodation (PEUAT), which has regulated the establishment of all types of tourist lets since 2017, inspection work will continue once all tourist flats have been extinguished. Some 10,500 fines have been given and 9,700 closure orders issued since 2016, while the volume of 6,000 monthly adverts for tourist lets has been reduced to between 300 and 400, detected by the team of municipal spotters, with tourism platforms required to withdraw them immediately. During this time, as many as 3,473 illegal tourist flats have also been recovered to be used as people’s permanent residences.
Real and effective measure of 30% protected housing
In parallel, work is in progress to make effective the measure reserving 30% of new homes and major renovations for use as protected housing, and for the private sector to take real joint responsibility for developing affordable housing in Barcelona. Since this measure was approved in 2018, only 91 homes have been added to the city’s housing stock, in accordance with the permits awarded, and of these only 8 have been executed.
The new proposal, which will now start being developed further with political groups, is geared towards enforcing what was set out in the MPGM of 2018 and adding new options so that private developers make the 30% quota effective, with the transfer of protected homes to other sites. At the same time, the idea is to open up the possibility of a social developer tasked with executing these homes. The revamp to the 30% reserve also aims to facilitate the renovation of homes, increase the number and in turn the quality of the residential housing stock.
Similarly, the City Council’s right of first refusal on the acquisition of the resulting homes will be maintained. The City Council currently has 5,000 homes in progress, at various stages of execution, which will result in over 3,300 flats becoming available in this term of office. These homes are the result of direct development by the Municipal Institute of Housing and Renovation (IMHAB) and of alliances with third parties such as non-profit organisations, the metropolitan operator HMB or the Catalan Land Institute (Incasòl).