Regionalization of housing policies? An exploratory study of Andalusia, Catalonia and the Basque Country

Abstract

The Spanish home ownership sector has been hit hard by the economic crisis. Repossessions stand at around half a million in the period from 2008 to 2014. This article investigates how the authorities, both at the level of the Spanish state and of the autonomous communities (regions), have responded to this problem. We investigated whether they assist troubled home owners and aim to design a less risky housing system, with more (social) rental housing. Our research in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Andalusia shows that Autonomous Communities are playing an increasingly important role in this matter. This finding fits well with theories on the formation of regional varieties of welfare, which indicate that flaws of the central governments in providing social welfare, are increasingly addressed by regions. The Basque Country seems to be on the way of designing the most comprehensive system of housing policies of the three regions, including a strong Right to Housing. All three regions regard the mobilisation of the large vacant dwelling stock as an important means to provide more affordable rental housing. However, the owners are often unwilling and the three regions have proposed drastic measures, such as fines and even temporary expropriations. The central government resists such measures, because they might interfere with the proper working of the country’s financial system. It shows that certain policy competences can never be totally isolated from other policy fields and multi-level distribution of competences makes it all the more complex.

Social Rented Housing in the (DIS)United Kingdom: Can Different Social Housing Regime Types Exist within the Same Nation State?

“…As Dol, et al (2016) observe, the limited studies available on Flanders (Winters and Elsinga, 2008) and Scotland (Robertson and Serpa, 2014, to which we should add Gibb, 2015) have developed outside a theoretical framework. Similarly, the recent account of housing policy in the different parts of the UK by McKee, et al provides a useful commentary, but the authors reach the partly tautological conclusion that, "This re-scaling of public policy-making is fundamentally geographical [sic], and demands a more spatially nuanced understanding of the evolving process of devolution."…”

“…Yet, without an analytical framework, we can't really say. Dol, et al, (2016) seek to explore the housing policies of three Autonomous Communities in Spain following the economic crisis. They find that all of them shifted the emphasis of subsidised housebuilding towards rental, adopted a variety of schemes to assist distressed mortgagors, gave some substance to the constitutional "right" to housing through prioritising social housing allocations for homeless and vulnerable households, and experimented with measures ranging from taxation to expropriation to free up unoccupied dwellings for residential use.…”

Comparing Local Instead of National Housing Regimes? Towards International Comparative Housing Research 2.0.

“…In the field of housing policy, the concept of multi-level welfare states is relevant as well. For example, in the United Kingdom (Stephens 2019), Germany (Haffner et al 2009), and Spain (Dol et al 2017), many housing policies are formulated at the regional level.…”

Learning Geographical Distribution of Vacant Houses Using Closed Municipal Data: A Case Study of Wakayama City, Japan

“…Deteriorated vacant properties might exert negative externalities on adjacent neighbourhoods (Baba, Hino, 2019;Whitaker, Fitzpatrick, 2016), and city planners have attempted to control the number of vacant properties (Dol et al, 2017;Radzimski, 2016). In the case of the United States, Detroit Land Bank Authority, an organization that promotes the active use of vacant properties, plays a prominent role in regulating vacancies (Alexander, 2005).…”