EUKN - Spain - An alternative Approach to housing - CIUDAD y TERRITORIO Estudios Territoriales

An alternative Approach to housing - CIUDAD y TERRITORIO Estudios Territoriales

Introduction

The paper attempts a detailed description of Social Housing in Euskadi [The Spanish Basque Autonomous Region].The markedly different form of the Basque model is here said to be determined by a whole gamut of considerations such as the availability of a greater store than anywhere else in Spain of reserved urban building ground earmarked for social housing, the inalienable nature of social housing once declared as such, the impossibility of being granted access to this unless it be through a free and open concourse under the auspices of the Basque Housing Council [Etxebide], an extended habit of both ground and housing rentals, positive discrimination to favour putting empty housing up for controlled renting, a strict control of transmitting rented occupation by public warranting, public guarantees for bidding and withdrawal, an effective exercise of re-possession of social housing were this to be put to other sorts of uses.

Description

The Basque Housing model is thus said to carry with itself a very particular sort of private property featuring a great number of public and legal obligations that find their reasons for being in a General Weal which is which is expressed through a Public Housing Service which keeps watch over citizen housing rights and this Social State’s teleological grounding. In the author’s opinion, such a model that can count among its successes Spain’s highest social housing quota and her largest reserve of new built social housing on offer can well be said to be giving an immediate and direct answer to the housing needs of many thousands of citizens and at prices a half or a quarter of that asked on the open market. This it does as a public administering of the common lot and to answer the present and future housing needs of Basque Society while at the same time bringing positive pressure to bear on the Private Enterprise Housing market. It is the author’s opinion that such a model that seeks market hegemony for the public housing sector is just as applicable by any other Autonomous Regional Government or even by the State itself.

Publication date

01/06/2008

Project finished

01/06/2008

Researcher

Javier Burón Cuadrado

Article info
ISSN: 1133-4762

Links

Ministry of Housing

"An alternative Approach to housing" (PDF; Esp; 144,9 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Housing

Keywords

Housing policy