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Last year, the construction of affordable housing across the Region of Murcia virtually ground to a halt, due to rising costs and a lack of subsidies for developers. Now, funding has been released that will allow 1,820 new affordable homes to be built throughout the Region.

 

The regional government is busy preparing the new affordable housing decree which will be submitted for approval in October. This will make available 136 plots of land spread across 27 municipalities to any developer with a project to build affordable housing, especially for young people and middle-income families.

 

The amount of land could still increase but at the moment, Murcia, Cartagena, Molina de Segura and Lorca have the most sites on offer.

 

The capital's municipal area accounts for approximately 30% of the 136 locations, while the remaining 26 municipalities share the remaining 70%.

 

Regional government sources explained that the land inventory is "a key tool for promoting new public housing developments and facilitating collaboration with city councils on housing policies that respond quickly and effectively to citizens' needs." This tool "will allow us to accurately determine the location, urban planning situation and buildability of municipally owned land, facilitating the management of supply and demand to achieve an effective instrument for access to housing."

 

Murcia’s regional president Fernando López Miras stressed that these affordable homes will not be built through public initiative; rather, the necessary land will be made available to developers so that they can undertake the construction themselves.

 

As well as providing more land to build on, the government also wants to make affordable housing projects more attractive to developers. As such, it plans to remove a lot of the red tape surrounding the initial proposals and introduce a declaration of compliance certifying the habitability, safety, and health of the home instead.

 

Similarly, another new feature will allow city councils to designate for housing the plots of land their urban plans have set aside for sports, cultural and social facilities, excluding plots where educational and healthcare centres are planned.

 

To facilitate this measure, which is highly demanded by the real estate sector, the Region plans to create a new concept called the ‘Special Urban Development Plan for Social Housing.’ This will allow land to be classified as affordable housing (subsidised, rental or collaborative) in the general development plans of municipalities.

 

 

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