The housing crisis in Spain has two bottlenecks. One affects those who have already managed to enter and experience difficulties staying inside; the other, those who are outside and are increasingly facing more obstacles to access a home. The first bottleneck leads to delays in paying rent, the mortgage, or utilities. The second prevents thousands of young people from leaving the family home, makes it harder for many workers to find rentals that fit their wages, or for adults renting rooms in shared flats to obtain their own dwelling.
It should be clarified that the first issue does not refer to illegal occupancy. The data analyzed in this report measure delays in paying the mortgage, rent, or household bills, which in Spain reach 14.2%, compared with an EU average of 9.7%. The result of the study Beyond Affordability: Housing Access, Social Innovation and Institutional Diversity in the European Union shows that a significant portion of those who have already accessed housing remains in a vulnerable economic position.
There is, furthermore, a second problem, which appears before a dwelling is secured. Spanish youths leave the family home, on average, at thirty years old versus twenty-six in the EU. That difference cannot be considered a cultural anecdote. It represents the postponement of personal, family, and professional projects, as well as a prolonged reliance on parental resources.
Our analysis of the twenty-seven EU countries highlights the importance of considering both bottlenecks. When only the conditions of people who already live in an established home are studied, Spain appears in an intermediate position (thirteen out of twenty-seven). In this regard, its levels of overcrowding and the burden of housing costs are not among the worst in Europe. However, this image changes when the ability to emancipate is included. Spain then drops to twenty-second place out of twenty-seven member states.
The explanation is simple. Conventional statistics observe those who have already managed to enter the housing system, but barely see those who are still waiting outside. A young person who cannot afford to pay rent and stays at their parents’ house does not necessarily appear as a vulnerable person with housing problems. They may not suffer defaults, may not allocate an excessive share of their income to rent, and may not appear as a crowded household. Yet they lacks a real opportunity to build an independent life.
“A young person who cannot pay rent and stays at their parents’ home does not necessarily appear as a vulnerable person with housing problems”
The Spanish family cushions this situation. It offers accommodation, shares costs, and prevents many people from falling into more severe forms of exclusion. The main problem is that not all families have the same capacity to shield themselves. Some young people can stay in a spacious home and receive financial help to emancipate, while others come from families without assets, with reduced incomes, or with space constraints. Access to housing thus depends less and less on one’s own salary (merit) and more and more on the resources accumulated by the family of origin (lineage).
This transformation has profound consequences not only for housing but for society as a whole. It delays family formation, reduces labor mobility and weakens the belief that professional effort can improve living conditions. It also reinforces a divide between those who can receive housing, an inheritance or financial help and those who depend solely on their income.
That is why we must stop talking only about the number of homes or prices and start talking about access and defaults. The goal of housing policy cannot be limited to lowering rents or building more homes. It must ensure that a person with a job and normal earnings can access a suitable home without becoming burdened by unsustainable debt or relying on their parents’ wealth. This requires acting simultaneously on both bottlenecks.
“Thus, access to housing depends less and less on one’s own salary (merit) and more and more on the resources accumulated by the family of origin (lineage)”
To help those who are already inside, measures are needed to reduce economic vulnerability, prevent defaults, and protect households facing difficulties. For those still outside, it is necessary to increase the accessible supply, facilitate renting, reduce initial financial barriers, and steadily expand the public, social, and non-profit housing stock.
Building more is also necessary, but merely increasing the number of homes indiscriminately is not enough. If new developments remain out of reach for middle- and low-income households, the supply will grow without solving the access problem. Policy must distinguish between producing housing and producing affordable housing.
Spain needs to mobilize land, speed up licenses, simplify procedures, and provide legal certainty. But these reforms must be accompanied by commitments to affordability, protection of vulnerable tenants, and long-term preservation of subsidized housing.
The growth of private supply and the expansion of the public stock are not incompatible strategies. They are components of a single response. Cooperatives, housing with occupancy rights, non-profit providers and other community initiatives can also contribute. These models create spaces between owner-occupied and conventional renting. However, they require land, stable financing, technical assistance, and a predictable legal framework.
“It is necessary to build more, but simply increasing the number of homes is not enough”
The same applies to new forms of housing. Not all housing has to be in conventional concrete blocks, as has been built for more than a century. Modular housing, mobile homes, folding houses, among others, can provide a coherent and rapid response to access and default problems, especially for groups facing the greatest access challenges.
The worst possible context to face these challenges is the current political polarization. Housing has become another battleground where every position offers a total explanation and discredits any proposal coming from the adversary. From one extreme, property owners are portrayed as responsible for the problem, and there is almost sole reliance on controls, prohibitions and public sanctions. From the other, any public intervention is interpreted as an attack on the market, and it is claimed that building more will almost automatically solve the crisis.
Both perspectives identify real problems, but fail when they become closed positions. The market cannot by itself guarantee access for those with insufficient income. Yet the public sector cannot, in a short time, produce all the housing needed. Likewise, price caps do not automatically create new supply, but liberalizing land does not guarantee affordable housing either. Therefore, protecting tenants should not entail ignoring landlords’ security.
The polarization prevents combining these measures. Each government changes the rules of the previous one, each opposition promises to repeal them, and the various administrations hold each other accountable. The result is uncertainty for small landlords, developers, and investors, insecurity for tenants, frustration for those still waiting for a housing opportunity, and a broad fatigue that does little to contribute to the climate needed to solve this problem.
“The housing has become another battleground in which every position offers a total explanation and discredits any proposal from the adversary.” The housing demands exactly the opposite: analysis, cooperation and continuity. Building, rehabilitating, mobilizing land and expanding the public stock requires more time than a legislature. It also requires coordination between the State, the autonomous communities and the municipalities, because no administration on its own has all the necessary instruments.
As long as part of the population struggles to maintain their housing and another segment cannot access it, Spain will remain trapped between those suffocating realities. And as long as polarization compels us to choose between solutions that should be applied together, we will continue arguing about who is to blame rather than who we can help.
