The housing crisis hypocrisy is frustrating

Stuck in permit limbo while Spain complains about housing shortages

As seemingly all of Spain complains about a housing crisis, the local government of Cornudella de Montsant still has not issued me a building permit.

The permit is a necessary step for me to move forward on a renovation project that has been stalled for months, and which would create, in theory, two new housing units out of a previously abandoned 4-story rowhouse.

These apartments would be in the center of a town that has few available rental units, where locals are having trouble finding affordable housing, and where frustrated potential homebuyers are lamenting the lack of options on the market.

I know all of this because I am smack in the middle of it.

I have received offers to buy my property, even if it is still a construction zone. I have communicated with buyers, both directly and through my friend, whose father is the real estate agent who helped me buy it in the first place. I am in constant contact with my architect, who assures me the town is working on the permit, though the last I heard, the town will ask for “clarifications.”

By the way, just in case you’re in need of clarification, this is the structure as it currently stands:

And this is what we have proposed:

A newly insulated roof and a rooftop terrace.

That’s it!

Believe it or not, there is a 56-page document from the architect that outlines the plan. Most of it is boilerplate filler. Some of it is screen captures of products we plan to use in the construction.

I have a budget from a contractor that is ready to go. They have insurance that protects the city from any potential damage to city property, a plan for waste disposal, and a plan for safety during construction. The architect’s “colegio” (which I take to be a professional standards organization) has added its stamp of approval to the project plan. I’ve already paid thousands of euros to the architect so he could prepare all of this for submittal.

And so far, in return, I have received… A vague threat to fine me unless I patch the hole in the stone wall I created four months ago in order to replace a beam, in a wall that won’t even be there after the rooftop terrace is finished.

I am assured that all of this is not a big deal.

But I am also assured every week from domestic and international media that the housing crisis in Spain is a hair-on-fire Very Big Deal, and that it is mainly the fault of short-term rentals, Airbnb, and rich expats driving up prices.

Here is the NY Times less than a month ago (“Barcelona Becomes Ground Zero for Europe’s Housing Dilemma”).

The story gives some indication of how sticky the problem is. As it points out (and as I have as well), there are 4 million empty homes in Spain—but they’re empty for a variety of reasons that are sometimes hard to untangle. The right to housing is in the country’s constitution, but rental prices have surged 57 percent since 2015, and prices have risen 47 percent, while incomes have grown just 33 percent.

Market forces aren’t helping. The NY Times highlights a particularly egregious recent example of a Dutch investment company buying a historic Barcelona building and immediately sending eviction notices to all tenants, with plans to renovate and raise rents.

Spain is confronting a housing crisis that has rapidly become one of the most acute in Europe. Since 2015, nearly one-tenth of the country’s housing stock has been plucked by investors or converted to tourist rentals. The scarcity has helped drive up prices much faster than wages, making affordable homes out of reach for many.

Am I one of those investors? I have “plucked” a building which had sat empty for decades and have now invested tens of thousands of dollars earned in the U.S. (with more to come?) to convert it into a safe, livable space.

Only, my patience is wearing thin, as you might have already sensed.

Two years ago, when I signed the contract to buy this property, I was 40 years old and full of fire for this renovation. Then, the project was delayed for a year because, somewhat unexpectedly, I brought my son to Spain with me and enrolled him at an international school in Barcelona. There we lived for a year.

However, this year, with my son living back in the U.S., I’ve struggled to move this project forward at all. The skill I’m lacking is the massaging of Spanish & Catalan bureaucracy. I did it to get my green NIE, I did it to get my empadronamiento, and I did it to get my Spanish driver’s license. All of which was probably more bureaucracy than I dealt with in the preceding ten years of living in the U.S.

But the building permit has so far stumped me.

Maybe it will come soon. Maybe the clarifications the town is asking for will be simple. Then again, my patience is running quite thin, and there are other things I would like to do with my life.

I was psyched to spend years 41 - 43 of my time on this Earth building something cool in the Catalunyan countryside—am I similarly excited to spend years 43 - 45 doing it? I’m not so sure.

Meanwhile, I’m still thinking about this flyer passed out by affordable housing activists:

If you’re interested in a translation, here are the eight points:

1. Prohibit speculative purchases so that a vulture fund can’t come and kick you out of your home.

2. Permanent rental contracts so you can live with peace of mind.

3. Close and limit tourist apartments.

4. Expand the public housing stock and provide rehabilitation aid so that banks don’t take advantage of you when you buy an apartment.

5. Regulate seasonal rentals so that you can have your own neighborhood.

6. Require private developers to provide affordable housing, reserving at least 30% of subsidized housing.

7. Enforce price regulation with the sanctioning regime we have promoted so that abusive prices do not go unpunished.

8. Prevent evictions and mortgage abuse so that everyone can have an apartment at a fair price.

I’m on board with some of these things.

By all means, limit tourist rentals and prohibit Airbnb (aside from renting a room in your own house that you currently live in).¹ As a city hall reporter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I saw #6 work reasonably well, even if it did modestly increase prices for the market-rate housing.

But for as many times as I’ve seen a housing regulation intended to fix a problem, I’ve also seen it exacerbate the exact problems it was meant to solve. Rent controls do far more harm than good, one review found. And here’s o3’s review, which notes that while rent control might benefit the people whose rent is being controlled, it also leads to displacement, lower labor mobility, a reduction in overall housing supply, price increases outside of the rent-controlled units, and a decrease in housing quality.

Ultimately, the main beneficiaries of rent control are often middle- and high-net worth individuals, whereas newcomers and low-income seekers lose most, according to a 2024 meta-review of 112 different studies.

And what about permanent rental contracts, as the flyer advocates? Well: what if the owner of the apartment loses their job somewhere and wants to come back to live in their own home? What if rents can’t keep up with expenses for the building, what then? What if a renter stops paying rent for years—should you still “prevent evictions”?

In Catalunya, there is an “Okupa” movement that has been ongoing for decades—the activist movement (kind of like “Occupy Wall Street”) was originally intended to protest housing shortages, economic equality, and property speculation.

But it has also led to squatters occupying homes they don’t own. Because the laws in Spain are so favorable to renters, these “okupas” can often stay in properties for years, living there, raising their kids, going about their lives, without ever paying rent, while the owner struggles against a mountain of protections against eviction.²

And of course, there is nothing in the handout about speeding up the permit process or making it easier to build new units.

So yea, I’m quite frustrated that this project is taking so long, while at the same time Spain complains of a severe housing crisis.

And if it sounds like maybe I’ve talked myself into abandoning the renovation altogether, you’d be right. As I wrote a month ago, there’s a price for everything. If someone offers me enough, I’ll take the euros and run—the cliffs will always be there, after all, and there’s no permit required to park the van nearby. Or, to stay with friends.

I wrote in my annual planning for this year that the one goal I felt I was falling short on was to lead a simpler life:

It’s the one goal set I feel like I’ve failed at the most. This year, I want to do better. Clear the decks. Reduce. Delete. Sell.

Abandoning the project to someone else would certainly help with that.

Meanwhile, Barcelona has been calling me. Living there last year was one of the best years of my life. If you ask me now, I see myself spending just as much time there as I do in the countryside, climbing (more announcements on that hopefully to come).

Having a house in town, and one in the country really does strike me as the ideal lifestyle in the long run. It’s just that my house in the country is so far a crash-pad pit into which I’ve been throwing a lot of money while struggling to keep warm in the wintertime. So far, all I’ve gotten in return is a neighbor complaint, a threatened fine, and a lesson in patience (ok, and a warm shower after climbing).

I have to be careful this doesn’t consume too much more of my life—or produce more gray hair—than I signed up for.

1. Not that this has solved the problem elsewhere. In NYC, which banned Airbnb in 2023, evidence shows that the law has not pushed rents down (they remain at record highs) and had no clear effect on home prices or sales volumes. The law did, however, push up hotel prices and effectively reduce short-term housing rentals.

2. New “Anti-Okupa” laws are now being passed that give property owners more tools to evict squatters, though it’s still enough of a problem that video cameras and alarm systems are recommended on properties you may leave unattended, even for just a day.