To establish an impact plan for affordable housing throughout Catalonia to enable 10% of housing to be publicly owned within ten years

A determined, initial intervention must be carried out in order to address the structural shortcomings in terms of affordable and social housing and to bring us closer to meeting the target of creating a public housing stock that can be maintained and expanded in time. A comprehensive policy is needed to enable 10% of housing to be publicly owned within ten years. To achieve this, it is necessary to promote a plan from a regional perspective suited to the scale of each municipality, steering away from the segregated mass housing projects of former times in preference of numerous smaller housing operations unfolding simultaneously which are integrated into the existing fabric. The outcome must be an affordable and social housing policy supported by excellent town planning, an active policy to set aside and expand public land, and a plan of actions with a timescale in all municipalities in Catalan territory. This initial intervention will mean that, during the term of office currently commencing, 60% of the public housing needed to reach the overall figure of 10% within ten years will need to be built. To achieve this, determined, swift and specific measures are required, such as: stopping the sale of public land; mobilising land reserved for protected housing; shortening deadlines in the progression of projects; simplifying regulations; mobilising empty apartments, encouraging mandatory assignment of use to expand the public stock; and upgrading the housing appraisal system according to energy efficiency and the versatility and durability of the structures built. With this host of measures, the construction of public housing for social renting – always under stringent public supervision – can be funded through public/private cooperation models: assignment of public land under building lease by means of public invitations to tender for planning, construction and subsequent maintenance in order to build and manage a social housing development under an affordable renting system for a sufficient period of time in order to recover the initial investments, with transparency mechanisms in terms of the overall costs of the planning, construction and management, and with regard to the income from rental and maintenance charges. Once the surface right period has expired, the land and the building must be reinstated into the assets of the public administration.