This Thursday, the workers’ commissions presented a proposal for the creation of a public investment fund for affordable housing (FIVA). The union’s objective is to take advantage of the new financing lines for the promotion of housing and the low profitability that banks grant to small savers to finance this mechanism, which would allow the construction of 50,000 affordable rental homes per year over the course of the next decade. As explained by the Secretary General, Unai Sordo, investors would obtain a return of around 3% and the builders and managers of this part of the public park would obtain estimated profits. The rental price would be reduced by at least 30%, with prices between 7 and 11 euros per square meter. For a house of 80 meters, the estimated rent would be between 560 and 880 euros per month.
As explained by Sordo himself and CCOO Public Policy and Social Protection Secretary Carlos Bravo, the fund would channel both private savings and public resources. “When we talk about private savings, we are referring to individual savings, adequately remunerated and which today are found in financial institutions with little remuneration,” said Sordo, who cited estimates from the Bank of Spain of around 50 billion euros in extraordinary savings. for which banks do not give interest. “It would be a booklet model where people would have the money in sight, available and with the guarantee of the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Credit Institutions,” said Bravo, who emphasized that the difference compared to banking entities is that the organization would invest the money in public policies, particularly in housing.
The second way of raising resources would come from institutional investment, through these funds, such as those of labor pensions or other collective investment instruments or foundations, with a socially responsible vocation, which would also obtain a “prudent and reasonable” . Furthermore, Bravo highlighted that the European Commission has created a specific police station for housing policies. “There will be community funds that can supply FIVA,” he said, as well as other state funds, which they propose to manage through the Official Credit Institute (ICO).
The fund would require the cooperation of public administrations with available land. First of all, from the Commercial Entity of Public Lands (Sepes), the Ministry of Housing, but also from the autonomous communities and town halls which, in addition to making available public land available, must classify housing as protected. And they must do so forever, to avoid practices such as those that have occurred in recent decades, which have allowed homes built with public support to end up being sold on the open market at much higher prices. students.
The beneficiaries of the fund would be both public and social economy entities, private non-profit entities and even limited-profit entities. These would have yields of around 3.5%. And it would not only be for construction, but also for the acquisition and rehabilitation of built housing. The union is interested in the Austrian model, in which for-profit housing operators are responsible for a fifth of the housing stock and have built more than 840,000 properties.
The great asset of this fund would be the public guarantee from the State. “It would be comparable to government bonds,” Bravo said, but with a “specific” focus. The next step is to present the idea to the Ministry of Housing, where the union will present success stories. “This is a proposal that follows models already implemented in other countries of the European Union, as is the case with public policies financed in France, including, in particular, housing, through the capture and remuneration of individual savings through Livet A”, they indicate in a report, in which they estimate that 17% of the population lives in rental according to this model, at an average price of 6.27 euros per square meter.
