The Barcelona City Council, through the Municipal Institute of Housing and Renovation, will hold two information sessions open and free to all citizens, which do not require registration, during the month of February, with the expansion of public housing stock in Sant Martí as the centerpiece. Specifically, the first meeting will be held on Wednesday 15 at 6 pm at the Casal de Barri del Parc i la Llacuna, while the second will take place on Wednesday 22 at 6 pm in the Sala d’actes de l’Escola la Pau.
Both sessions will allow citizens to have a broad overview of the commitment made by the consistory, in recent years, to expand public housing throughout the district, as an essential strategy to ensure the right to housing. For example, the different mechanisms available to the City Council to achieve this goal will be shown, such as the construction of new developments, the purchase of properties and apartments from the private market and the acquisition of housing from the private market through programs such as the Rental Exchange.
An expansion of the public park that, translated into figures, reaches 2,000 apartments since 2015, with an investment by the City Council of 244 million euros. In the informative meetings, it will also be possible to learn about the different developments that have been completed in the district these years, as well as those that are in the pipeline, those under construction, and those with land reserves. In total, 1,479 dwellings and 77 housing units. Construction is, in fact, the mechanism that has been boosted the most, ahead of the purchase, which represents 139 dwellings, and the capture, which is 292.
This district is also particularly interesting because of the different types of housing it houses. First of all, the rental housing developments, such as the recently opened to the public C. Lluís Borrassà, C. Venezuela, C. Pallars, or C. Lola Iturbe Arizcuren, as some of the most outstanding. But also for the APROP housing of Glorias and co-housing developments such as La Balma.
The two information sessions in Sant Martí are part of the City Council’s outreach plan, which has proven to be of great interest to citizens, as demonstrated by the two meetings organized in the Sant Andreu district in January, which were a great success in terms of attendance, and which will continue to be held in other districts of the city.
In addition to the expansion of the public housing stock, the sessions will also mention Barcelona’s Register of Applicants for Subsidized Housing (HPO), the official channel that all citizens must use if they wish to access subsidized housing in the city, which requires prior registration.