MADRID (Reuters) -Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday sent a letter to leaders of Spain's regions seeking support to triple investment in social housing to around 7 billion euros ($8.00 billion)
Spain's Prime Minister Sanchez Seeks Regional Support to Boost Housing Budget
MADRID (Reuters) -Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday sent a letter to leaders of Spain's regions seeking support to triple investment in social housing to around 7 billion euros ($8.00 billion) over the next four years.
Spain needs to increase its social housing stock, currently equivalent to around 3% of all homes, to bring it closer to the European average of 8% in order to alleviate a shortage as buying and renting prices reach record highs.
Ahead of a meeting on Friday between Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and regional leaders, he offered to invest 4 billion euros, up from the current 1.7 billion allocated over the last three years, to build more homes and plug a housing deficit estimated at 450,000 by the Bank of Spain.
Regional governments, which are mostly controlled by the conservative People's Party (PP), would provide the remaining 2.7 billion euros.
That would mean Spain's regions have to agree to increasing their contribution to the housing budget to 40% from the current 25%. The government also wants regions to commit to maintaining social housing under state ownership and prohibiting their sale, government sources said.
In the past, Spain built thousands of homes with public funds that later passed into private ownership.
Government sources did not provide details about how the increase in housing budget would be funded or whether it would need parliamentary approval.
Sanchez's minority coalition government is trying to pass new taxes in Congress to discourage owners from renting homes to tourists and foreigners from buying.
The government will also propose creating a new database from all national and regional registers, with the aim of better monitoring rental and housing prices, as well as tourist rentals and available land to build on, the sources said.
($1 = 0.8754 euros)
(Reporting by Corina Pons; editing by Charlie Devereux and Ed Osmond)
