This Tuesday, the plenary session of the Madrid City Council approved one of the urban developments that the city has most resisted. It is the conversion of the old military lands that surround the A-5 as it enters the municipality of Madrid into a new neighborhood of the capital. It is called Operation Camp.
The details of the upcoming constructions that will house it were known a few days ago, when the Urban Planning Commission gave its first green light to the figures that the Municipal Plenary will approve this week. It was known that there would be 10,700 homes but not their distribution and other details such as the type of protection they would present and how many of them would be dedicated to rental.
The figures for Operation Camp are as follows: 2.1 million square metres of land will be developed, a quarter of which will be housing (about 25%). 34% will be allocated to roads, 17.3% to green spaces, almost 15% to facilities of all types and 7% to different types of transport.
Political leaders have given the greatest importance to housing figures, as an example of public action that increases the supply in the market in the midst of a major crisis in access to affordable apartments. 40.2% of the square meters built will be free housing, while 36.8% will be limited price public housing (VPPL) and 22.9% will be basic public protection housing (VPPB).
The Madrid City Council (led by José Luis Martínez-Almeida’s PP) and SEPES, the state-owned land entity that is part of the Ministry of Housing (led by Isabel Rodríguez, from the PSOE), are responsible for the operation. In a note published a few days ago, Almeida’s team stressed that everything happened “thanks to the close collaboration between the central and municipal administrations.” The two politicians mentioned were seen together last Friday at a joint event, in good harmony.
Will there be a lot or a little social housing that will come out of this operation? Will it be useful to contain or lower market prices? “We are aware that the planning of the 2000s includes things that would be done differently today,” acknowledged a few days ago PSOE councillor Antonio Giraldo, responsible for his party’s municipal urban planning issues. “But we had to start now to have houses in a few years.”
He also explained, regarding the 40% of free housing planned, that “the commitment of Sepes is to put free housing on the market also at the price of the protected module,” he added in a publication.
An “obsolete” model for Más Madrid
“Only 7% of the housing offered will be truly public,” they point out in relation to the figures from Más Madrid, stressing that this will be the percentage of regulated rental housing, the only ones that, in the medium and long term, will be able to contain the cycles.
The other information given by the opposition is that 40.2% of private housing will be sold at market price and that the remaining 53% of VPPL and VPPB type apartments can also be sold at the same market prices 15 years after their construction, as the law allows, so that “they feed the speculative cycles of the market”.
“The current model of sheltered housing does not work. Historically, huge amounts of land and money have been invested in the construction of houses that in a few years will become private.” Faced with this, Rita Maestre’s party is proposing a new Operation Camp “to reverse such structural errors in housing policy.”
Maestre explains, in statements to this newspaper, that “instead of defending housing as a right, instead of looking at a future model that brings us closer to European references like Vienna, Almeida takes us back to the successful model of the early 2000s. have time to do things differently”, he assures while putting forward the alternative proposal that they will present in plenary session on Tuesday.
“Our model is different: public and social promotion that guarantees the ownership of the land to the administrations and avoids speculation,” he says, proposing that of the 10,700 planned homes, 4,013 are public housing with affordable rent; another 2,675 homes are built by private operators under surface rights, respecting the public ownership of the land; and another 4,012 are for affordable rental, promoted by cooperatives and social entities. That is, 100% have limited prices and the majority are intended for rental, through different models, demonstrating “a determined commitment to indefinite rental and the consolidation of a public rental stock that offers guarantees to future generations.”
His proposal focuses on “protecting public land as a guarantee for the future,” which he says allows state-owned companies and non-profit entities to build at lower costs. “There is an urgent need to put into practice housing solutions different from those used so far, promoting non-profit cooperative models, capable of offering housing below market price through land transfers and public financing tools,” party sources add. from cities like Vienna, where public administrations retain land and manage housing, either directly or through non-profit entities.
Works in 2025 or 2026
If everything goes as planned by the Madrid City Council and SEPES, the next administrative steps will involve the approval of the bases and statutes of the Compensation Commission by the Government Commission, after submission to public information.
At the same time, the development of the urbanization project for the area will take place, which will necessarily also be submitted to the Government Council. The plans of the Ministry of Housing are to cover the bureaucratic procedures as quickly as possible and to start work at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026. The municipality has already announced that, for its part, it will try to shorten the deadlines as much as possible.
