I know the Spanish economy is weak, but it's concerning when a working family cannot afford rent and clearly changes need to be made to ensure that they can.
The problem is that the working class has grown increasingly poorer because of the terrible economy. Fix the economy to fix housing. Something needs to pay for the housing. Trying to fix housing without fixing the economy is a fool's errand.
"Lucía Martín cut her political teeth in the PAH, the housing pressure group. She believes Catalonia - and Spain more widely - is dealing with the fall-out from decades of failing to invest in social housing."
"In Barcelona alone there are an estimated 10,000 empty flats or homes. After the crash of 2008, property prices plummeted and speculation soared. With homelessness still a big problem, unoccupied real estate is a source of grievance, especially as most of it is owned by large firms."
"That is what happened to Mariana Stirbu who moved into a flat in the La Sagrera district of Barcelona with her partner and two children three years ago. "The two men who rented us the flat seemed like the owners - they were wearing suits and we went to sign the contract. We were paying 750 euros a month, so everything seemed fine," she says."
750 euros is not that much for a family of 4. More detail on flat size would have been helpful. It is roughly 25% less than I paid (together with a roommate) for a 2 bedroom apartment over 25 years ago. That was the US, but this means that Spain is probably at least 25% poorer than the US was 25 years ago.
Here is more information. The family highlighted has a couple of disabled and someone who lost their job due to COVID-19. They have an income of 1000 euro per month and offered their landlord 250 euro per month for rent. From 2013 to 2019, rents increased 50% (I think another timeframe should be used since the property market deflated a few years before that) but salaries went down 8%. The Spanish economy decreased by 11% in 2020.
The rough measure is that you really want those Silicon Valley tech incomes because the investable income is so great. You can value that just via the market actions (how many people are willing to move if given the chance to).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Spain
It isn't primarily due to high rents. It is due to the Spanish economy being shitty and badly run for decades.
Then foreigners swooped in and bought prime real estate.
But that doesn't mean that there is not enough housing. It is just that people were getting more and more poor with more and more unemployment.
Here is a relevant quote:
"Following the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the Spanish economy plunged into recession, entering a cycle of negative macroeconomic performance. Compared to the EU's and US's average, the Spanish economy entered recession later (the economy was still growing by 2008), but it stayed there longer. The economic boom of the 2000s was reversed, leaving over a quarter of Spain's workforce unemployed by 2012."
It looks like it has recovered some but unemployment is still high especially for the young. Also there was a lot of youth emigration though recently there has been immigration from poorer countries.
25% below the poverty line 15% unemployment