Experts urge public–private collaboration to tackle the housing crisis

• The latest study by the UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM) analyzes the main models of collaboration in affordable housing and includes interviews with industry experts
• Specialists highlight the importance of measures such as granting public land under surface rights or attracting private capital through anchor public investment
• The stock of affordable housing in Spain barely reaches between 1% and 2.5% of all households, compared to 15–25% in leading European countries

(Barcelona, 3 December 2025).— The UPF Barcelona School of Management (UPF-BSM) today presented the report “Public–Private Collaboration in Affordable Housing”, a study promoted by the UPF-BSM Chair in Dignified and Sustainable Housing and the Metropolitan House Foundation. The report examines public–private collaboration as a means to address the housing crisis through case analysis, expert interviews, and a review of international experiences.

Access to affordable housing has become one of the main social, economic, and urban challenges in Spain. “We are experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis, marked by a shortage of affordable homes,” says Ramón Bastida, director of the Chair and one of the authors of the study, together with professor María Martín. “Public–private collaboration emerges as a key instrument to mobilize resources, expand the affordable housing stock, and professionalize management,” notes the UPF-BSM professor.

The report includes interviews with Carme Trilla, president of the Hàbitat3 Foundation; Joan Ramon Riera, Housing Commissioner of the Barcelona City Council; Carles Salas, Legal Director of the College and Association of Real Estate Agents of Catalonia; and Donato Muñoz, CEO of Cevasa.

“It is essential for the public sector to recover and expand the affordable housing stock through stable investment and structural measures, complemented by public–private collaboration to improve the economic viability of developments and thus increase the scale of action,” the experts state in the study.

The specialists interviewed highlight the importance of advancing measures such as granting public land under surface rights, creating more stable regulatory and fiscal frameworks, and attracting private capital through anchor public investment. They also point out that it is “important” to improve prior coordination between public administrations and private operators to “ensure the economic viability of public tenders and attract capital under safer conditions.”

Diagnosis of affordable housing

According to the study, affordable housing is a flexible category encompassing various models, from traditional social housing to co-operatives under use-transfer schemes or privately developed projects supported by the public sector. “All of them share the same goal: ensuring purchase or rental prices that are proportional to household income, particularly for middle- and lower-income groups who are currently trapped between an inaccessible free market and an insufficient public supply,” the report notes.

“The problem lies not only in the design of typologies, but in the structural insufficiency of supply,” says Bastida. Today, the affordable housing stock in Spain barely reaches between 1% and 2.5% of all households, compared with 15–25% in leading European countries. This situation stems from factors such as “the scarcity of developable land, insufficient public and private investment, competition from tourist and temporary uses of housing, regulatory and administrative rigidities, and imbalances in the existing stock,” explains the UPF-BSM professor.

Future challenges

The experts involved in the report agree that some of the main challenges in addressing the affordable housing problem include increasing land availability, simplifying bureaucracy, ensuring construction quality with sustainability criteria, and promoting industrialization in order to reduce costs and shorten timelines. They also point to the need to “review the tax framework associated with affordable housing so that tax reductions are reflected in more accessible prices for buyers and renters,” the experts highlight.

“All of this requires a constant balance between public and private interests, within a collaborative framework that enables rapid responses to the scale of the current crisis,” Bastida asserts.

The report’s conclusions present a series of recommendations to foster public–private collaboration in affordable housing:

• Simplify bureaucratic processes

• Review and streamline municipal ordinances

• Expand direct subsidy programs

• Increase project scale

• Promote the creation of specialized management entities

• Apply fiscal incentives

• Guarantee legal certainty in affordable rental housing