An Alternative Approach to Housing

Abstract

The paper attempts a detailed description of Social Housing in Euskadi [The Spanish Basque Autonomous
Region]. The markedly different form of the Basque model is here said to be determined by a whole gamut
of considerations such as the availability of a greater store than anywhere else in Spain of reserved urban
building ground earmarked for social housing, the inalienable nature of social housing once declared as
such, the impossibility of being granted access to this unless it be through a free and open concourse under
the auspices of the Basque Housing Council [Etxebide], an extended habit of both ground and housing
rentals, positive discrimination to favour putting empty housing up for controlled renting, a strict control
of transmitting rented occupation by public warranting, public guarantees for bidding and withdrawal, an
effective exercise of re-possession of social housing were this to be put to other sorts of uses. The model is
thus said to carry with itself a very particular sort of private property featuring a great number of public
and legal obligations that find their reasons for being in a General Weal which is which is expressed through
a Public Housing Service which keeps watch over citizen housing rights and this Social State’s teleological
grounding. In the author’s opinion, such a model that can count among its successes Spain’s highest social
housing quota and her largest reserve of new built social housing on offer can well be said to be giving an
immediate and direct answer to the housing needs of many thousands of citizens and at prices a half or a
quarter of that asked on the open market. This it does as a public administering of the common lot and to
answer the present and future housing needs of Basque Society while at the same time bringing positive
pressure to bear on the Private Enterprise Housing market. It is the author’s opinion that such a model that
seeks market hegemony for the public housing sector is just as applicable by any other Autonomous Regional
Government or even by the State itself.