The measure was one of a dozen unveiled on Monday by the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, as the government seeks to quell mounting anger over housing costs that have soared far beyond the reach of many in Spain.
Sánchez sought to underline the global nature of the challenge, citing housing prices that had swelled 48% in the past decade across Europe, far outpacing household incomes.
“The west faces a decisive challenge: to not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants,” he told an economic forum in Madrid.
The proposed measures include expanding the supply of social housing, offering incentives to those who renovate and rent out empty properties at affordable prices and cracking down on seasonal rentals. In Spain just 2.5% of housing is set aside for social housing, a figure that lags drastically behind countries such as France and the Netherlands, said Sánchez.
You’re literally replying to a comment about rent control being part of a multi-pronged approach, one that INCLUDES building massive amounts of social housing, not a substitute for anything.
Sounds like you want building to be the ONLY prong, which wouldn’t work for anyone except the developers that would get to build and thus profit more.
Literally just building more houses does work though.
Not in itself, no. With no additional levers, developers will just build more luxury condos and “investment properties”, since that’s what’s most profitable.
You need to be MUCH more specific than just “build more houses” to solve the affordable housing crisis.
There’s significantly more empty homes already than there are unhoused people, but unaffordable homes existing doesn’t help.
Science has shown that even just building high-end housing will lower housing prices across the board: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119022001048?via=ihub
They take the money from the rich people, lowering prices in the middle class, lowering prices for the lower class.