Who will build the residents' homes?

A few days ago, the president of the association of real estate developers in the Balearic Islands recommended that young people start saving 300 euros per month to be able to access, in five years, the thousands of limited-price homes planned to be built in Palma. The news, at first glance, even seems hopeful. Finally, a residential solution could begin to open up for part of the resident population. And it is probably true that many of these developments will be necessary. It is also true that without formulas like limited-price housing, a significant portion of residents could no longer aspire today to access housing in the current market. But behind this promise is a question that is hard to ignore: what will happen during these five years? And, above all: who will build these homes?

Over the past few months, news has been emerging that, viewed separately, might seem anecdotal. A civil servant living in a caravan. Improvised homes on top of a cave. Young people unable to become independent. Professionals who give up on staying in the Islands because they simply cannot afford the residential cost. Growing difficulties in retaining workers in essential sectors. But perhaps we are no longer talking about anecdotes. Perhaps we are beginning to see forms of social adaptation to a residential market that has progressively become decoupled from the economic reality of a large part of the resident population. And this is where we have probably not yet fully understood the housing problem in the Balearic Islands.

A deeper problem

For years we have repeated the same diagnosis: there is a lack of construction. There is a lack of land. There is a lack of streamlined permits. There is a lack of social housing. And probably all of this is partially true. But there are increasingly more indications that the problem is deeper. A few days ago, the same Diario de Mallorca published the controversy over the “astronomical” prices of a development presented as affordable housing. And probably here lies one of the great contradictions of the current model: even when more housing is built or specific formulas like HPL are created, the system continues to generate prices that a large part of the resident population cannot afford. This forces us to ask an uncomfortable question. If we continue to build but prices remain out of reach for resident wages, is it realistic to think that the problem will simply disappear by increasing supply?

Perhaps the question is no longer just how many homes are built, but under what rules of the game the price of land and housing is formed within a limited territory. Because within the same residential land, very different demands compete today. On the one hand, a demand linked to wages and the local economy. On the other hand, a demand linked to assets, external income, or global purchasing power that does not necessarily depend on wages generated here. And both compete under the same rules of the game. Perhaps this is where the problem really begins.

Acting on the phenomenon

During recent years, many measures have been promoted: subsidies, public guarantees, protected housing, limited-price housing, tax incentives, taxes, new urban developments, and mechanisms to speed up procedures. But, despite everything, residential decoupling continues to intensify. Probably because most of these policies try to correct the visible effects of the problem, but do not act on the phenomenon that generates it. They try to facilitate access to housing without modifying the rules of the game of residential land on which economically very different demands compete. And it would probably be unfair to make developers the sole responsible parties for this situation. Developers operate within specific rules of the game, with increasingly high land, construction, and financing costs. The problem is deeper: it is the very functioning of residential land within a limited territory that tends to transfer this pressure to the final price of housing.

And here appears a disturbing paradox. The more a society needs exceptional formulas for residents to access housing, the more evident it becomes that the ordinary residential market has progressively ceased to function as a residential market designed mainly for the resident population. Because the risk is that living in the Islands will cease to depend mainly on work and will increasingly depend on entering a protected category, meeting certain criteria, and having access to limited residential quotas. And meanwhile, there is a huge group that barely appears in public debate: normal workers, self-employed, civil servants, professionals, young couples, and resident middle classes who do not meet the criteria for protected housing, but also cannot compete in the current free market.

The great contradiction

The great contradiction is that the same system that promises to solve the future housing crisis precisely needs the workers who today find it increasingly difficult to live here. Building thousands of homes is not just a matter of land, permits, or financing. It also needs people to build them. And it is increasingly difficult to find workers who can afford to live where they work. When this happens, the problem is no longer just real estate. It becomes territorial, economic, and social.

In the Balearic Islands, we constantly talk about housing, but the root of the problem is probably the land. Because homes can be built. Limited island land, no. And it is precisely on this limited land that very different demands compete under a single market logic. This is where the Insular Framework for Territorial Balance (MIET) attempts to introduce a different reflection. The MIET does not aim to prohibit the market, nor to eliminate private property, nor to turn housing into an administrative system. Nor does it renounce investment or economic activity. What it proposes is a much simpler question: if residential land fulfills an essential territorial and social function within a limited territory, perhaps it is not irrational to rethink the rules of the game by which this land is organized and allocated. Not only to protect the landscape and the territory. But also to protect the ability of residents to continue living where they work and sustain society with their labor and their taxes.

Ultimately, it is a reflection that directly connects with the spirit of Article 47 of the Constitution, which speaks of the right to decent housing and the public responsibility to regulate land use in accordance with the general interest. Because perhaps the real debate that the Islands are having today is no longer just how many homes should be built. The question is whether the residential market continues to fulfill a residential function for the society that lives and works here. And perhaps the homes of residents can only be built by those territories capable of ensuring that the workers who build them can also live there.