Spain gets a national public housing construction company

The Week in Housing 12/12/25

This will be the last post of 2025 as it’s time for me to get stuck into grading before finishing up for Christmas. This week I discuss a few recent developments that readers might be interested in. Thanks to everyone who read The Week in Housing in 2025, and especially to all the paid subscribers, and have a Happy Christmas.

---

Mi Casa 47 es su Casa 47

The Spanish Government established a new public housing development company on Tuesday. This is one of the most interesting international developments in recent years and is especially relevant in Ireland. The idea of a public housing development/construction company has gained quite a lot of traction on the left over the years. I believe it was first proposed by Rory Hearne, and subsequently by the Labour Part as well as ICTU. There’s also been discussion here about spinning out the housing aspect of some local authorities into some kind of ‘arms length’, housing specific organisation.

The new company will be called ‘Casa 47’. The name references Article 47 of the Spanish constitution which enshrines the right to housing, and Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez has emphasised that this new model of public housing is very much framed by the right to housing. From the outset, it will take on around 20,000 units from existing public housing stock as well as around 50,000 units in development. And it will take over public land, which will be transferred from various bodies. I understand a lot of the assets it will take over come from SAREB, Spain’s equivalent to NAMA (anyone remember NAMA’s ‘social dividend’?)

Casa 47 will ‘take responsibility for the full cycle of public housing: from land management and development to the construction and administration of long-term affordable rentals’. I’m not sure if this includes employing construction workers directly, a key aspect of similar proposals in Ireland.

The aim is to provide housing for people earning between €16,000 and €63,000, which apparently means 60% of the population will be eligible. It will have a particular focus on younger people and working families. Rents will be set so that they do not exceed 30% of tenants’ income, and this will be significantly below market rents. I’m not sure if this means rents will be directly set in relation to incomes, like our differential rent system, or if they will be set according to some other criteria with the 30% figure acting as a ‘ceiling’. I understand from talking with Spanish contacts that there will be some ‘cross subsidization’, i.e. rent from better off households will subsidize rental costs for less well off households. I also understand households will be eligible for a rent subsidy to ensure rents are affordable.

All in all it sounds super ambitious and marks an extremely radical departure for a country with very little tradition of social housing provision. It is also perhaps the clearest indication yet of what I have called the ‘post-neoliberal turn’ in housing policy across Western Europe. In Spain, like in many other countries, the ability of market housing to meet the needs of the population is increasingly discredited.

Some more reflections on the landlord exodus

I was at the Oireachtas Committee last week (see my written submission). As usual there was an inordinate amount of discussion about landlords leaving the market. In particular, the session before mine (with Threshold, CATU, IPOA and IPAV) spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about anecdotal cases of hard pressed landlords (you can watch back here). As I’ve said on many occasions, we still don’t have very robust evidence on what’s going on. From my calculations, on average the number of Notices of Termination issued on ‘sale of property’ grounds annually has represented about 5% of registered tenancies over the last couple of years (note these NoTs reflect intention to sell, not actual sales).

Everyone seems to agree this represents an exodus but OBVIOUSLY you will always have some level of exits. Landlords selling property does not, in and of itself, mean there must be a problem with housing policy. It is not at all clear whether or not 5% exiting is higher than normal or if reducing this number is a feasible/desirable policy goal. Nevertheless, politicians and the media (and of course the landlord lobby groups) will continue to act as if the goal of rental sector policy is to ensure that no landlords ever sell a property.

Also worth noting that, as far as I know, CATU’s appearance at the Committee marks the first ever appearance by a PRS tenant representative organization. I thought they were very effective, and made a case that was both radical and pragmatic. Read their written statement here.

Housing Agency podcast

The lack of clear thinking around the PRS underlines the importance of improving the quality of our public debate on housing. With this in mind, the Housing Agency’s new podcast series is especially welcome. All four episodes our now available and cover some really important topics like Cost Rental and Community Led Housing.

Events & news

Simon Communities will launch a new report on January 19th looking at older adult homelessness.

What I’m reading

A really interesting new paper on cost rental, by Michelle Norris, Lucy O’Hara and Bob Jordan. It is a fascinating look at the transfer of cost rental policy from the Austrian model to Ireland, and explains why the Irish model looks quite different. A really interesting new publication from the Progressive Politics Research Network looks at various aspects of housing policy in Europe, including one by my colleague at UCD Aidan Regan on affordable homeownership. On the topic of public construction companies, an interesting new paper looks at the Swedish case.