One of the central aims of the Housing Law, approved by the Congress of Deputies last week, is to expand the social housing stock to reach 20% of all households within roughly twenty years. This plan targets residents in municipalities declared as stress zones, as summarized by the PSOE on its site.
The party cites a target of about 300,000 social rental homes in Spain. This would cover about 2.5 to 3% of households, far below the European Union average of 9.3%. In its latest report, ESADE, a renowned business school, revised that figure to 290,000 properties, representing around 1.11% of the estimated 26 million properties in the country.
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The business sector has calculated what it would take to hit the government’s stated targets. To reach 20% of the total housing stock in twenty years, the pace would have to match the level of production seen in the previous two decades, with social housing growing each year by the same total added to date. In other words, sustained growth in the social apartment park would rely on annual increases equal to the cumulative additions already achieved.
Is it a viable goal?
ESADE contends that reaching the 20% target is almost impossible if the annual output of public rental housing stays below 290,000 units. The study describes the objective as a difficult one to imagine given current capacity.
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The chief difficulty in producing a large volume of housing each year lies in the absence of a robust development sector capable of delivering at that scale. In 2021, for instance, construction firms submitted applications for visas to start 108,895 projects, including both free and protected residences for sale and for rent. A second challenge is land availability. The essential raw material for this initiative is the right land in locations with strong rental demand and stressed markets. There is not a plentiful supply of suitable land within the public administration’s purview, nor enough capacity among private developers to meet the projected needs. For example, Madrid’s public-private plan to create affordable rental housing managed to tender only 6,600 units, with some situated in less desirable locations. The region also contends with a large stock of land in new urban developments that take a long time to develop and urbanize.
Suggestions to increase supply
As a strategy to stimulate supply, a Catalan university proposes applying density bonuses. These would let developers build more housing and square meters within the area’s zoning framework, in exchange for social leasing commitments. Another recommendation is to mobilize vacant housing held by large private owners. ESADE suggests that accelerating the supply of rental housing could be achieved through public tendering of around 20,000 homes owned by major landlords, offering a 20% discount based on the rental price reference index and granting leases to autonomous regions and city councils under set conditions. This approach aims to unlock underutilized stock and speed up the transformation of the market.
Measures designed to improve access to social leasing and to mobilize vacant housing show promise and seem to be moving in the right direction. The challenge for Spain is to translate this promise into tangible outcomes. To reach European levels of social housing, it will be important to set realistic mid-term targets, prioritize short-term transformations, secure supply from large property owners through negotiated discounts, and ensure that converted homes meet the required locations and typologies. Urban planning must align with broader goals of equality of opportunity by investing in transport, healthcare, education, and green spaces, especially in increasingly diverse urban areas. These steps could reshape Spain’s housing landscape and contribute to a more accessible social rental market for households across the country. (Attribution: ESADE housing study, updated findings 2025.)