Over 70% support limiting tourist flats or capping rent to tackle housing crisis

An overwhelming majority of Catalans believe the country is going through a housing crisis.

An opinion poll published on Friday by the government-owned survey agency CEO reveals that 91% of the public think it is difficult or very difficult to access decent housing, a stance shared by both genders and all age groups.

According to the same study, 89% of residents say that the current housing situation harms quality of life in Catalonia –and one in three admit they are personally affected by this crisis.

Residents have found a high degree of consensus in how to tackle this problem, since 84% of them favor the construction of affordable public housing –a similar percentage hail the Catalan government plans to create 50,000 public homes by 2030 by building, buying and refurbishing.

Other measures include limiting the number of tourist flats –74% of public support–. Indeed, the Barcelona mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced last year that it will remove all tourist apartments by 2028 –the upcoming local election will take place in 2027 and could potentially see changes in the Catalan capital's local government.

Capping the rent to tackle the crisis is a measure introduced by the Catalan government led by pro-independence ERC's Pere Aragonès and followed by both the current cabinet and the Spanish ruling coalition, and it also finds the consensus of 72% of the public.

Obliging the owners of several properties to partly use them for social housing (71%) or raising taxes on homeowners with several empty flats (67%) are also measures agreed by most residents, as well as economic aid on young people and low-income households (71%).

The poll also shows that 21% of the people who are 16 or above have considered buying a home in the past 12 months –this percentage grows to around 50% when it comes to people aged 25 to 34, that is, approximately, 500,000 people.

CEO's director, Joan Rodríguez Teruel, said that these expectations "will not be met taking into account the current offer" in comments to the press on Friday.

The paper also tackles the public's approach to housing as a way to make business. Six in ten believe that homes are not to be used as an economic asset like any other resource –yet, men between 16 and 24 are the exception, as around 70% of them believe housing is one possibility to make more like any other. In the past few years, young men have proved to distance themselves with the rest of the society in terms of ideology, with more conservative, liberal and less feminist or environment-friendly approaches.