When you have to choose between housing and healthy eating

The runaway rise in housing prices has made access to it the most pressing problem in Spanish society.

Purchase prices have skyrocketed 46% in the last five years. And the average rental price, more than 20% (14% in the last year alone), which means that has grown almost four times more than salaries.

The result of this upward spiral (by virtue of which the rise in housing feeds back to that in rent) is that a third of the average annual expenditure of each household is now allocated to paying for the house and its expenses.

And this, as EL ESPAÑOL has explained, has led to a dramatic situation: a third of the families that are mortgaged, and up to half of those who live in rent, can no longer afford to eat meat, chicken or fish at least every two days or heat the house.

The main factor that explains these exorbitant prices is the shortage of housingboth under ownership and rental regime.

The data is incontestable: while around 250,000 new homes are created per year in Spain, barely 10,000 homes are built annually.

And if we have reached this extreme situation it has been, mainly, because of the interventionism of the Sánchez Governmentexpressed both in the regulation of rents and in the passivity when it comes to expanding the real estate stock.

The Executive’s housing policies in the last seven years have been dedicated, in essence, to imposing charges that punish homeowners. And this, supposedly, to protect the tenant, whom they have ended up harming as well.

The ineffective and counterproductive statist orientation of the government’s housing policy has been reflected in the Housing Law, which allows price control to be established in “stressed areas”, stops evictions, establishes mandatory 5-year extensions in contracts, and contemplates a fiscal blow to empty apartments and “large holders.”

With all these restrictions, The Government has only made it no longer profitable for many owners to put their properties up for rent.. Which has caused supply to decrease and prices to skyrocket.

And this has encouraged owners to lean towards either tourist rentals or sales, as demonstrated by the fact that of the 650,000 houses that were sold in 2024, approximately 550,000 corresponded to withdrawals from the rental market.

The irony is that, once it has caused housing to be diverted towards other more profitable options, the Government dedicates itself to pursuing what it has itself promoted. Well fighting against “speculation”, as Sánchez defended on Wednesday to support Ione Herb y Gabriel Rufian; either “declaring war on tourist apartments”, as the president also proclaimed in the last Control Session.

In this way, The Government resorts to the scapegoat of the market to exonerate itself from the responsibility that falls to it in the deployment of a disastrous housing policy, conditioned by its radical partners from Podemos and Sumar, and that discourages supply instead of stimulating it.

Spaniards cannot afford more exercises in government demagoguery, such as the president’s successive announcements of housing deliveries over the last few years. All together they amount to almost half a million, but only 80,000 are in the execution phase and only a few hundred have been delivered.

Limiting yourself to regretting, as the Executive does, that the autonomous communities of the PP do not apply the Housing Law is no solution (when, in addition, if it were applied, it would only aggravate the problem).

And, of course, cosmetic and childish initiatives such as the telephone line that the Ministry is going to enable so that Spaniards can request information about housing have no impact either.

What is required is decisive action to contribute to increasing supply, encouraging rather than discouraging the entry of properties into the rental market.

The measures of proven effectiveness for this are well known: tax credits for owners who rent their houses, guarantee of legal security through the prosecution of squatting, and, above all, modifying urban planning regulations to liberalize land, lighten bureaucracy and streamline administrative procedures to promote construction.

If the national housing policy is not urgently reconsidered, more and more Spaniards will find themselves in the atrocious situation of choosing between paying the rent and being able to enjoy adequate food.