She already has a name. The new public housing company was named Casa 47, as revealed this Thursday during the company’s official presentation, in reference to Chapter 47 of the Constitution, which recognizes the right to adequate and adequate housing. “We have to remind ourselves every day that it is not optional, that responding to this right is a constitutional mandate,” said Housing Minister Isabel Rodriguez, celebrating that with the launch of this entity the government is “contributing, after 47 years, to improving the welfare state.”
“All the pillars of the welfare state depend on public infrastructure, which has been preserved despite threats, cuts and attempts at privatization,” said Rodriguez, who gave education, health, pensions and the public dependency system as examples. He said: “It is a major advance in public housing policies in our country, and it is one of the policies that Spain has implemented at other times in its history, and there is no going back.”
Specifically, Rodriguez emphasized that the ministry “found the legal mechanisms so that everything built by the government housing entity becomes public forever.” An effort by the executive branch, which seeks to prevent the investment of public money, land or resources in a state park from ending up in fewer private parks, as has happened in Spain in recent decades.
Aside from the legal framework of the new company, the minister presented, in general, what the lease contracts will be like. Their goal, he said, is to provide “peace of mind” to families, “not so that today they can get housing and then tomorrow they are evicted or that we allocate public funds for affordable housing for which they then ask you for 1,300 euros.” In this sense, Rodriguez submitted that the contracts will have a duration of up to 75 years, which will be reviewed for periods of 14, to ensure that the conditions of the house have not changed.
In any case, the requirements for obtaining affordable rental housing from the new public company are not overly restrictive, without knowing the subtleties that include ownership issues, at least in the economic part. Specifically, tenants must have income between 2 and 7.5 times IPREM. That is, between 16,800 and 63,000 euros annually. A wide range responds to the problem of access to housing in the free market that the executive considers “transverse”.
In 2026, Casa 47 will make available an online portal “where you can see the available promotions, as well as the specific requirements for each one.”
How much will rents cost? Once again, Rodriguez pointed to “legal formulas that guarantee that no one will allocate more than 30% of their income to pay rent.” He insisted, “This does not mean that we will build at a lower cost, but that the cost of construction will be borne by public administrations.” The Minister gave the examples of Madrid, where she estimated that Casa 47 prices would be 38% lower than market prices, or Malaga, where they would be reduced by half.
“In other places where this tension has not yet been reached, we will work with other corrective criteria, such as not exceeding current prices,” explained Rodriguez, who mentioned the houses that Sarip owned in Olivenza, Badajoz, where his average income is 25 thousand euros per year, where the rent will cost about 400 euros.
They point out that incomes below access requirements, i.e. incomes below €16,800 per year, are “supported by social housing”, which recognizes that incomes above €63,000 “should not have problems accessing the free market”.
The head of government, Pedro Sánchez, announced the creation of a public company, with the capacity to “build and manage housing”, at the conclusion of the 41st Federal Congress of the Socialist Workers’ Party, held last December. Throughout this year, the executive has been working on the creation of this new company and its legal framework, which was presented on Thursday, on the basis of the State Land Entity (Sepes).
Throughout these months, the Ministry of Housing took steps to sponsor the new state company, such as the ongoing transfer of some 45,000 houses and 2,400 lands owned by SARP, or the promotion of the Operation Camp, to build a new neighborhood of about 10,700 houses in Madrid, or the announcement of the construction of 1,300 houses on the lands where the old prisons were built. On Thursday, Rodriguez also announced the launch of a “public housing offer with financing of $100 million,” to bring more homes into this public complex.