Barcelona Housing Lottery
On August 18th I landed in Barcelona after three long years and a global pandemic away. I had never seen my parents as happy as during the first days we were back at their home. These were the highs of the honey moon period, and it felt like the Christmas reunions you see on TV for a few minutes.
Every detail seemed new again. The taste of my mum’s food; the way people stare at you on the street; how they interact with each other; how friendly and loud they are; the smells of the city; the human density; the expressions of love in every corner; the ratio of people and dogs; and the indescribable feeling of freedom.
The prices of everything have gone up, like in most countries around the world. Still, there are things considerably cheap like the price of a beer, which is not so different from the price of a bottle of water.
On September 1st, we temporarily moved to a friend’s apartment while she was away working on a movie set. These type of apartments in Australia are called commission flats, although the connotations, preconceptions and assumptions about class, education and privilege are quite different.
In this particular case, Public Housing in Barcelona means a block of units built by the government, and offered to the population for a significantly reduced rent for a period of seven years. The fifty-square-metre apartment we are house-sitting, is a brand new architectural project repurposing an old factory, part of a contemporary art centre complex.
The building is filled with people from all ages, genders and personal life circumstances. How do you apply for it? The government opens a public enrolment with a specific criteria. In many cases — not all — the units are offered to people under 35 years old with an income below a certain threshold. As part of the criteria, in every building there are units reserved to people with disabilities, single parents, large families and same sex couples.
Our building is housing forty-two apartments, two of them donated to the art centre, which offers the accommodation to artists who come from outside Barcelona and need to perform for consecutive days.
By now, I have met a few tenants in the building who told me they were selected out of thirty five thousand applications, so they feel like they already won the lottery.
Many of my friends live in commission flats, be it rentals or brand new units they purchased through a social pool of applications. I wonder if in Australia we need a serious visual, structural and mental rebranding on the concept of commission flats, where broader sectors of the population can access public housing opportunities without any social connotations and specially, without any private investors inflating the already unaffordable house market.
I have been in Barcelona for two months now, and I have hardly taken any photos. I am trying to be as present as I possibly can, absorbing every day as a precious gift.
This article was part of my November 2022 email newsletter called “Barcelona Housing Lottery”.
