Five measures so that islanders can have a home

1.- Build 10,000 affordable homes in the coming years

The Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands share the dubious honor of being the autonomous communities with the fewest protected homes built in the last 25 years. Today they are two of the communities with the most problems in meeting the housing demand of a large part of the population – for different reasons, but also for this one. A tiny fraction of the 300,000 houses and apartments built since 1981 are public housing. Therefore, the first measure to tackle the housing crisis in the Balearic Islands involves decisively increasing the public housing stock, and doing so "constantly" is demanded by consulted experts, such as real estate advisor Pedro García. "The problems are not solved in one or two legislatures," he assures, and emphasizes that if 10,000 protected homes are not built in the coming years, it will not be noticeable.

The Government has already announced more than 1,200 new public housing units in planning, distributed among nearly fifty developments in the Balearic Islands. The Director General of Housing of the Government, José Francisco Reynés, defends the measure and emphasizes that it will be "the largest public housing planning in history" and assures that it will allow a 50% increase in the current public housing stock of the Ibavi.

This commitment also includes mechanisms to speed up its construction. The Government has approved extraordinary processing formulas to consider public housing an essential infrastructure, comparable to hospitals and educational centers. According to the director general, the objective is to "build more housing and faster" in the face of a housing emergency that has been worsening for years and in the face of repeated announcements by executives that reality contradicts because much less is always built than announced.

Along these lines, Pedro García also argues that the Administration should "identify available public land" and make it available to local developers at affordable prices to build social housing. García considers that the cost of land is one of the major obstacles and proposes mixed models: developments with a part intended for affordable housing and another for the free market.

2.- Prohibit and penalize the speculative use of apartments

Another line of action would be to reduce the weight of housing as an investment product –a trend that for two decades has been largely exacerbated due to the tourist rental of apartments and houses– and to recover its social function. Geographer Sònia Vives proposes “an agenda for the de-financialization of housing” that allows “it to be treated again as a place to live and not just as a financial asset”.

Among the proposed measures are increasing taxes based on the number of properties accumulated, surcharges on empty homes, and limitations on the tax advantages for large holders and SOCIMIS (real estate investment companies). According to Vives, the market rewards accumulation and speculation, which expels residents and hinders access to housing for local workers.

Pedro García also focuses on external investment pressure and advocates for restricting the purchase of homes by non-residents. The real estate professional proposes that access to a primary residence be linked to more than 10 years of fiscal residence in the Balearic Islands and that second homes have real use requirements to avoid purely speculative operations. "There are investors who buy, never sell, and are taking housing away from locals," he laments. In this regard, the parliamentary group MÉSper Mallorca recently brought a new attempt to the Chamber to limit the purchase of properties by non-residents, but it did not receive support from the right-wing majority.

3.- Convert tourist establishments into homes

The third proposal involves reusing part of the current tourist park, especially the obsolete, to allocate it to residential housing. The idea is to take advantage of disused or for-sale buildings, apartments, and tourist establishments to transform them into affordable flats for residents. Pedro García considers that this could be one of the quickest measures to increase housing supply. As he explains, “huge amounts of hotels, apartments, and guesthouses for sale are circulating in the Islands” and the Administration should intervene to promote “the change of use from tourist to residential.” The proposal includes creating small homes, between 40 and 50 square meters, specifically designed for young people, single people, and single-parent families.

This approach also connects with Sònia Vives's diagnosis, who advocates for removing part of the housing “from the speculative market” and reinforcing alternative formulas such as public housing and user cooperatives. Both agree that a significant part of the Balearic Islands' problem is that housing has ended up subordinated to tourist and financial profitability.

4.- Priority for residents and long-term rentals

The fourth measure combines the residential priority of housing with incentives for stable, long-term rentals. Both the Government and experts agree that access for residents to housing must be strengthened and that apartments should be recovered for the usual rental market.

The Balearic Government has introduced the requirement of five years of continuous residency to access public protection housing. The Director-General argues that this condition serves to guarantee that public developments "are aimed at the residents of the Balearic Islands". García goes even further and advocates for extending these limitations to the purchase of housing as well.

Regarding rentals, Sònia Vives rejects direct aid to landlords because she considers that “they end up becoming another income for landlords”. Instead, she advocates for direct tax incentives for tenants so they can deduct the cost of rent in a much more powerful way than now.

Pedro García, for his part, insists that the big problem is the fear of small landlords of default and squatting. “There are many people who have apartments closed due to legal uncertainty”, he states. That is why he calls for legislative changes that facilitate rapid evictions in cases of non-payment and more legal guarantees so that landlords put housing back on the long-term rental market.

5.- New classification of land that differentiates residential from tourist

The Menorcan economist Josep Sintes has sent the parliamentary groups a proposal called the Insular Framework for Territorial Balance (MIET), which primarily proposes to separate uses in territorial planning between residential “for citizens, to live” and land “destined for tourist and leisure activities”, explains this specialist. According to Sintes, “nothing is prohibited”. “What I propose with my work is to take advantage of the power that town councils have to differentiate land where there can only be houses and apartments to live in, and land where houses and apartments are made for tourist rental or to be exploited with seasonal rentals and similar formulas”. For this reason, Josep Sintes asks the parliamentary groups for a reform of the existing regulations that “facilitates town councils to be able to carry out urban planning in favor of residents”. “If we do not act in this way and, as is happening now, the most speculative uses of housing are admitted, the islanders will be definitively expelled from the market”, he adds. “It is being regulated only with income capacity criteria, and there will always be Europeans with more options to acquire housing. The rules that work elsewhere must be nuanced here”, concludes the Menorcan economist.