The Barcelona City Council signs the first use of land’s rights of the ESAL Agreement with the housing cooperatives ‘Abril’, located in Poblenou neighbourhood, and ‘La Domèstika’, located in Sants neighbourhood. The cooperative called ‘Abril’ (Abril Poblenou, SCCL) is the plot’s awarded entity, located at 115 Pere IV Street, for 23 cohousing houses. On the other hand, the cooperative called ‘La Domèstika’ (La Domèstika de la Farga, SCCL) is the successful awardee of the building to renovate, located at 36-38 Rossend Arús Street, for 7 cohousing houses. With these signings, both non-profit affordable housing projects are promoted with the aim of increasing the public housing stock in Barcelona.

The local government’s commitment to entities in the cooperative housing sector is formalized with this signing of use of land’s rights, which means the cession of a public plot for 99 years, by Barcelona City Council. According to this settlement, the qualification of the houses as Official Social Housing (OSH) allows to limit the maximum rent for each cohabitation unit. The project, as well as to expand the supply of social housing in the city, aims to hold speculation in Parc i la Llacuna del Poblenou and Sants-Montjuïc districts.

ESAL Agreement

The ESAL Agreement is an alliance with the most representative cooperative housing entities to build a thousand flats in the coming years, and it meets the need for affordable housing in Barcelona city. In this project, the local government is joined with the Federation of Housing Cooperatives of Catalonia (FCHC), the Coordinator of Social Housing Foundations (Cohabitac), the Solidarity Economy Network’s Association (XES) and the Social Housing Policy Managers of Catalonia’s Association (GHS).