The Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez; the Secretary General of Urban Agenda and Housing, David Lucas, and the Second Vice-President and Councilor for Regional Planning, Housing, Landscape and Strategic Projects of the Autonomous Community of Navarre, José María Aierdi Fernández, have today signed an agreement for the public promotion of 158 energy-efficient public protection homes for social rent, with a contribution from Mitma of 6,313,105 euros.
The agreement includes the implementation of grants for the promotion of housing in six municipalities of Navarra, which will be executed directly by the community itself through NASUVINSA, on its own land or ceded by the municipalities in agreement.
Specifically, the project envisages the construction of 47 housing units in Pamplona/Iruña, 58 housing units in Barañáin/Barañain, 4 housing units in Garralda, 8 housing units in Bera, 21 housing units in Altsasu/Alsasua and 20 housing units in Sangüesa/Zangoza. The total estimated investment in these promotions is 36.3 million euros.
Mitma’s contribution is financed by the Program to Aid the Construction of Homes for Social Rent in Energy-Efficient Buildings, of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The aim is to finance the increase in the public energy efficient housing stock for social rent or at an affordable price, through the promotion of new construction housing on public land, which increases the public affordable housing stock for a minimum period of 50 years, with a non-renewable primary energy consumption of at least 20% less than the requirements of the Technical Building Code.
For this programme, endowed with €1 billion, Mitma has already transferred €6,900,000 to the Foral Community of Navarre, with an additional transfer of the same amount planned in 2023. The assistance provided is up to €700 per square metre of useful living space with a maximum of €50,000 per dwelling.
As of December 20, 2022, a first agreement was signed with the Government of Navarre in the scope of this program, for the financing of 162 homes for social rent, also developed under public promotion through NASUVINSA, with a contribution from Mitma of 7,486,895 euros.
Constitutional right to housing
In his speech, Raquel Sánchez recalled the importance of expanding the public housing stock and improving habitability and sustainability of the existing one in order to contribute to guaranteeing the constitutional right to housing. “For too long he has looked the other way. It has avoided focusing on housing under the prism of human rights. And that has caused the concept of housing as a right to be replaced by that of housing as a speculative good,” he said.
In this regard, it has taken the opportunity to highlight the need to have a Housing Law called to help enshrine the right to housing, protect existing public housing, increase the supply of flats for rent at reduced prices and control incomes in the most stressed areas. All this within a State Housing Plan that was born with the intention of attending to the most urgent needs and that “includes aid for habitual rent to citizens with scarce resources, to victims of gender violence, to people affected by evictions; to homeless people; to others especially vulnerable; and, of course, to young people,” he said.
All of these initiatives are in addition to the Government ' s goal of facilitating access to decent and accessible housing. “We wanted to protect and expand public housing, the big black hole of our real estate market. The social housing park for rent in Spain offered coverage to only 1.6% of households compared to the rates of 15% exhibited by some countries around us,” explained Raquel Sánchez during her speech. “To remedy this shortcoming, we launched the Affordable Rental Housing Plan with which we are going to build around 100,000 homes,” he concluded.