Barcelona
To tackle the issue of affordable housing, the City of Barcelona bundles multiple policy approaches and instruments within the housing plan “The Barcelona Housing System: a mission-oriented economy (2016 – 2025).” The aim is to increase the city’s affordable housing stock, to preserve and upgrade the existing stock and to make sure that vacant homes and holiday lets are returned to the rental market. Therefore, all relevant stakeholders are addressed: the private market, non-profit developers, and the public sector, thus ensuring diversity in supply.
read moreBuilding, purchasing, mobilizing.
Through mobilizing vacant stock, purchasing land and building new houses, the City of Barcelona aims to increase the affordable housing stock by appr. 10,000 units by 2025. The majority of these will be realised through public funding schemes, the rest by way of public-private partnerships, half of which involve non-profit companies.
Social return.
For the new construction of affordable housing, Barcelona uses a cooperative housing model: the city provides building plots under a 75- to 99-year lease. City and state have joined forces in granting long-term loans. Buildings are built and maintained by housing cooperatives. Once loans are paid back, 50 % of the benefits must be invested in a revolving fund to support new cooperative projects.
Facts & Figures
- Between 2016 and 2020 the city’s affordable housing stock was increased by 3,607 units, providing housing to 9,100 people.
- Addition of 10,000 affordable units by 2025 to be achieved through development (8,000 units), acquisitions (1,000 units) and temporary mobilization of private units (1,500 units)
Temporary social housing in your neighborhood (APROP)
The industrialization of the construction process of public units makes them cheaper, faster to build and more sustainable. In Barcelona’s APROP program, standardized elements are pre-fabricated in mass-production, using significantly less energy than case-by-case housing construction. The adaptation of disused shipping containers for temporary housing requires a mere 400 kWh of renewable energy and the finished buildings are fitted with green roofs, vegetable gardens and clad with ventilated facades.
read moreFostering social sustainability.
Aside from the ecological benefits, the APROP program also focuses on social sustainability. As industrialized housing construction is quite cheap, it also counteracts gentrification. Prefabricated housing can be allocated at short notice to people in need, and can provide temporary housing to people with trouble accessing the regular housing market.The programme also aims at aiding community development by offering communal spaces on the ground floors and rooftops, and providing training and work placements to people at risk of exclusion.
Facts & Figures
- Benefits of industrialized construction: minimized environmental impact of the building through its life cycle; reduced construction time and costs, improved quality, control and efficiency of construction work
- APROP Ciutat Vella is already in operation and includes 8 one-bedroom and 4 two-bedroom units in a 5-storey building on a 186 m2 plot of public land
- The building has been praised for its innovative architectural design as well as its light environmental footprint
- APROP is already being scaled up in Barcelona with the construction of two additional projects with 40 and 42 housing units
- In 2021 the project was granted the New European Bauhaus Award by the European Commission
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