Spain: Tourism boom worsens housing crisis

DW (English)

Spain's tourism sector continues to grow, with 90 million visitors last year. And the country's population is also at record levels. The economy is the envy of Europe. But there's a downside to that growth: an increasing housing shortage.

Transcript

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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