Day 9: Affordable housing: forgoten right, tremendous business

 In many countries as my own, housing is becomming prohibitely expensive. This ,together with stagnant wages and unemployment is a recipe for disaster. We cannot fullfill our promise from the constitution to make housing access an equivalent to health and education in such context.

Why is this happening? And what are the solutions? 

In a liberal view the problem is of market nature. A very high demand in certain cities, with not enough supply, hence the solution is increasing the offer. That clashes a little if you nail down the details, as it is not always feasible in countries bounded by infraestructure, geographical limits. It is surprising that there are 1.3M of housing units in Spain it are empty for a long period of time, and phenomenons like touristic apparments and huge ownership concentration are making housing even more scarce in hot spots.

Progressive parties claim that public housing is yet the solution, yet hardly covers 5% of the total offer, and it requires a significant amount of investment, hard to get without an increase in taxes. Only those mapped to the far left tend to ask for price regulation, with some success stories in New York, Berlin...but it is maybe to soon to claim that a long lating and successful implementation exists.

For the supporters of the ocupy movement, prices are too high due to speculation and high concentration of ownership. Many of the ocupations are in empty houses owned by banks for a long time. This is supported by the official communication of this groups and the data, meaning that "invasions" to small owners are as far as we know the exeption.  Yet this just kept a few (60k) outside the streets (compared to 700k houses cleared due to impayments) in a very unconfortable situation, being criminalized and without a long term solution. 

Like in many polarised events, the problems pointed out by each side are true but tend to minor the issues rightfully stated by the other side. 

• Yes! there are founds that own vast amounts of housing properties for speculative purposes
• Yes!tourist apparments makes prices higher and exclude local communities
• Yes! the demand for living in certain cities is far too high with respect the offer
• Yes! no apparmet should be empty for a long period of time
• Yes! decent access to housing is in the constitution, yet few laws support it
• Yes! in the locations when infraestrcuture, cohesion permits we should increase supply of houses,ideally with public prices

How do we fix this? Maybe we can learn from other countries, and see what happen on places where housing is far better that in Madrid in Barcelona, for example in Germany.

1. There are not few important cities, but rather multiple hubs and cities of medium size that provide opportunities and high living standards
2. There is asignificant amount of social housing with respect total housing
3. Rent prices are regulated
4. Minimum salaries are higher

What should we do to improve access to decent and affordable housing?

1. Maybe we can start by increasing the minimum salary, which is well below the average in Europe.
2. Then we can increase to social rent offers
3.  We can stop competition between cities and incentivize investment is less crowded cities 
4. We can regulate the quality of the housing units and its price. The first will increase the offer of good housing, the other will make housing less of an investment and more a basic need.
5. We can improve periferical public transport, to make living outside the city centers more convenient and affordable

Ocupation is a desperate act, and in some cases crude opportunism. In any case is a good solution and fixes this strucutural problem that should be treated as an emergency. People in the streed cannot wait, but we need to plan the solutions within the rules of the game, and let the judges rule when a social rent or an exeption applies,. Bacause when each individual takes their own interpretation of justice, this can only lead to caos and pre-illustration times, which most of us do not want.

There are no shortcuts for good housing and the application of the constitution at best. Good urban planning, diversified economy, lasting and distributed prosperity, enterpreneourship and a great collaboration between public and private entities are a must if we want to avoid 40 year loans, houseless citizens with debts and not prospects, and the impression that property rights are in danger. 

A better housing will require us all to take place, working and not only asking for it.