Ten years ago, at the worst moment of the eviction crisis in Spain, social entities in Catalonia sought how to help their users not to be homeless. “It was a pressing necessity, we needed assisted floors, it helps families …”, recalls àngels Guiteras, then president of the third sector table, which brings together more than 3,000 associations. One of the solutions they found was to found the Hàbitat 3 Social Housing Manager.
A decade later, the Hàbitat 3 Foundation has announced the purchase along with the Barcelona City Council of the Orsola. The 26 homes of the farm, emblem of the housing crisis in the city, will be managed by the entity, which has become one of the main social -story administrators of Catalonia. Among those of their property and those assigned by third parties – they are private home or administrations – the homes they manage are 1,307. In total, 3,651 tenants, the vast vulnerable majority.
Despite the diversity of programs they house, their main mission is to locate homes, whatever their origin, to put them at an affordable price and to be in the hands of needy families. Initially, his idea was to capture the empty floors of the banks fruit of the prick of the real estate bubble. “But soon we saw that this was not the model that banks wanted,” explains Albert Ferré, general director of the Foundation. Instead, they began to reach agreements with administrations to take care of empty or emergency housing.
The first agreement was signed with the Barcelona municipal government of Xavier Trias (CiU), which served to access their first 200 homes, but then others would come with mayors and politicians of all colors, including Comunns and PSC. A fundamental figure for this has been the president since its inception and until today of the Foundation, Carme Trilla, who was Secretary of Housing of the Generalitat during the tripartite and that as an expert in the field maintains good relations with the majority of actors in the sector .
Today, of the 1,307 floors they manage, 301 are owned, often achieved through purchases thanks to the exercise of tanteo and retraction. They also manage, always with social criteria, private investor portfolios (267) and the main bulk of its park, 512 homes, are assignments of individuals. Most of them, in Barcelona, are the ones channeled by the Consistory through the emergency table (of evicted families) or the first home service (for synthesive people).
As for purchases, Ferré explains that the majority carry them out exercising the right of tanteo and retracting and with financing of the Institut Català de Finances (ICF), which subsidizes interest rates in exchange for the ownership of the house to pass to the agency of L’Abitatge de Catalunya (AHC) in 75 years. “This is how we also act to expand the public housing park,” defends the person in charge.
The Hàbitat 3 model, which has become one of the main social housing entities in Catalonia together with Fundació Salas or the Família I Benestar Social, is similar to that of Housing Associations in countries such as Austria, Holland or the United Kingdom, although in Spain they do not enjoy tradition or legislation that favors their activity. It is in general companies, foundations or cooperatives that are dedicated to mobilizing housing “with the aim of renting them below the market price,” says Eduardo González de Molina, professor and consultant in housing.
“In Spain we do not have a regulation that legally believes these companies,” he laments. This should include the conditions for these initiatives to be viable, it describes, such as priority in access to public land, reduced fiscal charges and facilities for access to public financing.
Apart from the purchase of Casa Orsola, Hàbitat 3 has participated in other media operations. The first was the assignment by the Generalitat of the Bloc House, in the neighborhood of Sant Andreu in Barcelona. Built during the Second Republic as a housing model for the working class, and deteriorated for years, in 2016 the Foundation assumed the administration of 17 of those homes to house families victims of evictions. He did it with the financial support of great firms such as Naturgy or La Caixa, in what was an example of his ability to capture resources from large companies.
Another known case is that of the Sant Pau social gym, in the Raval. After years of conflict and threats of eviction, the City Council achieved a purchase agreement with the property in which a company of businessman Jaume Roures participated, which was part of the investment. The management of the 36 resulting social floors also in charge of Hàbitat 3.
But even so, in the Foundation they recognize that that of the Orsola house has been an unpublished case for them. In the first place, for the amount disbursed, of 4.8 million euros (half of the total purchase price), according to Trilla achieved through a loan with a banking entity with the guarantee of the Consistory and also thanks to the sustained financing commitment of the municipal administration to guarantee the viability of the management of the income.
In addition, Orsola is an exceptional case for habitat 3 by the resident profile of the farm, which are not vulnerable from the economic point of view. The president of the Habitat 3 acknowledged this Friday that this particularity caused an “intellectual and ethical” debate within the Board of Trustees of the entity. Finally, they endorsed the purchase for three reasons: because part of the homes are empty and they can be allocated for social rent; to favor the integration of vulnerable families in buildings with homes that are not, and to contribute to the fight against gentrification in the Catalan capital.
In this sense, the operation has been criticized hard by the tenant union, which despite celebrating the paralysis of evictions has lamented that the investment fund has been “awarded” with the purchase of the farm for 9.2 million. The entity has described as shameful the press conference in which Hàbitat 3 has participated, considering that it has been carried out behind the backs of the neighbors. In addition, the union reproaches Trilla to assume Collboni’s proposal to modify the norm that forces promoters to reserve 30% of the new home for social use.
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