00:00Malaga, birthplace of Pablo Picasso and a popular destination for tourists all year round.
00:07Tiziana Procopio is a local resident.
00:09She likes the climate and the people here,
00:12but the 45-year-old shares an apartment with two other women,
00:16as it's all she can afford.
00:19I actually wanted to finally have my own apartment instead of sharing one,
00:23but that's what I'm having to do again.
00:26This was all I could find. It's tough.
00:30Her problem is exacerbated by Malaga's many tourist departments.
00:35Researcher Enrique Navarro conducted one of several assessments of how the city is changing.
00:42Apartment rents are higher in tourist destinations.
00:46That's nothing new.
00:48The problem is the speed at which it's happening here.
00:52Over the past eight years, the number of Airbnbs in Malaga has jumped from 800 to over 12,000 apartments,
00:59now missing on the regular market.
01:01This has led rents in the city center to rise by up to 90 euros a month.
01:05But that's not all.
01:08The rise in rent prices in the center also has an impact on a neighborhood three kilometers away.
01:15It automatically leads to an increase in rent prices for apartments in other parts of town.
01:20Tiziano Procopio has seen what that's meant for friends and acquaintances.
01:32People are having to move.
01:34Some are now living in surrounding villages.
01:36On the one hand, that's okay, because those villages will grow.
01:39The trouble is, it wasn't a voluntary decision.
01:43They had no other choice.
01:44In Malaga and other cities, the Spanish government is already building thousands of new apartments with EU funding.
01:53In Madrid, the city council is putting up new social housing blocks like this one.
01:58The monthly rent for the units, comprising one room with a kitchen and bathroom, will be 500 euros.
02:04With the 2,000-plus apartments built in the last five years, the Madrid Housing Authority now has 9,200 rental units.
02:14And we have 6,200 other apartments planned or under construction.
02:19However, Madrid's population grew by 120,000 in just one year alone.
02:26A lottery for 270 new social housing apartments attracted 14,000 applicants.
02:31Demand for new apartments is huge throughout the country.
02:37The Spanish population is growing by an average of 230,000 new households per year.
02:43And for years now, new apartment construction has been under 100,000 per year.
02:47And that deficit adds up.
02:49According to figures from the Spanish Central Bank, there's currently a shortage of 600,000 apartments.
02:55The gap between supply and demand is immediately apparent from real estate window displays.
03:00The apartments offered are pricey, but they're snapped up fast.
03:05It's a huge problem because it impacts middle-class people.
03:11With their current wages and the continuing rise in prices, they can no longer afford an apartment in the city.
03:18The government uses money from the EU's recovery fund to construct new homes.
03:23There are also plans to free up millions of square meters of land for building, like this still-grassy site in Madrid.
03:30A quick fix for a chronic problem? Far from it.
03:35The main issue is the land.
03:38Our data suggests that it could take an average of 10 to 15 years for the land to have the proper infrastructure to be ready for development.
03:44Given the housing shortage, that's way too long.
03:50And then there are the high construction costs and labor shortages.
03:54But there are other solutions. Marina Leira is a village of 2,500 residents, an hour's drive outside Malaga.
04:06The mayor explains what makes the place special.
04:09We see housing as a right, not a business.
04:12He shows us what that means not far from the town hall, a new neighborhood built with the help of the residents themselves, including the mayor.
04:22Now they're constructing even more apartments.
04:26It's a project that's been ongoing for 40 years now.
04:32We don't understand how social housing only makes up 2.5% of housing stock in this country,
04:38while the Europe-wide average is almost 10%.
04:41In Mara Neleira, we're trying to guarantee that people have a roof over their heads.
04:47We want to ensure that the residents only pay a small amount, a symbolic sum of 15 to 20 euros a month.
04:55An exceedingly low rent, although the apartments and surrounding land are owned by the village.
05:01But how does it manage to pay for construction, given the minimal revenue earned from those rents?
05:06We also try to get funding from other authorities, from the EU or the Andalusian regional government.
05:18Other towns get that funding too, but we use it to build social housing.
05:23We currently have over 300 apartments.
05:29They house a third of the population of Mara Neleira.
05:36Mara Neleira has been governed for decades by the United Left Party.
05:40Still, the mayor fails to see why other communities are not taking a similar approach.
05:48If Mara Neleira, with its 2,500 residents, can build up to 26 apartment buildings every four or five years,
05:56just think what towns and cities that have far more land and far greater economic resources could do.
06:01You just need to have the political will, and make access to housing an absolute priority.
06:10Whether Spain can successfully tackle these housing shortages is a matter of political will,
06:16requiring the government and opposition working together.
06:19Unless real change happens soon, renters' frustration will become a big problem for Spain's politicians.
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