Barely a day seems to pass without a report highlighting prices to buy or rent properties in Mallorca or without a report suggesting what authorities intend doing about addressing the issues caused by ever-rising prices and a shortage of affordable homes.
The reasons for this situation are various and regularly stated, with government policies (or a lack thereof) frequently the target for blame. The current government, which naturally apportions blame to the previous government, has its initiatives, some of which might even prove to be successful. But as the housing minister José Luis Mateo has observed, creating affordable homes can’t be done overnight. Rome wasn’t built in a day and nor was a block of flats for people with limited resources.
The freeing of land is one approach, hence the initiative whereby municipalities are ceding land for free to the government’s Build to Rent programme that will ensure ‘limited prices’ set by the government. Yet even with this the Rome principle applies. Six town halls (six out of 53 in Mallorca) have thus far identified land for the building of 1,800 homes. When will construction start? 2026, says the housing ministry. Why the wait? Is this in order to dot the i’s and cross the t’s of planning procedures, the very procedures the government is apparently seeking to simplify with its administrative simplification decree.
Much of the housing problem focus is inevitably on Palma, where absurd prices to rent rooms let alone entire flats are being set – 600 euros for a room; 1,600 euros for a three-bedroom flat. A consequence is that there is now a situation of ‘residential exclusion’. Palma has long had its homeless, people suffering from social exclusion. But as Marga Plaza, coordinator of the Cruz Roja (Red Cross) social emergency unit, explains: “People affected by residential exclusion are the segment that has grown the most recently. Those affected have jobs but the difficulty they have is access to housing, due to its rising cost or the difficulties in meeting increasingly demanding requirements from owners.”
While Palma continues to break housing price records in terms of prices, shanties are proliferating across the city. One couple are living in a tent in the Nou Llevant district. A settlement was established in the summer. There are now fifteen tents. Flor, not her real name, says that these people, like her, all have jobs. “We try to be as little of a nuisance as possible,” she adds. Local residents say that these tent dwellers don’t bother them.
Although they have jobs, getting back into the swing of a normal life can potentially be difficult the longer they are on the streets. Marga Plaza says: “If there is no prevention, cases become chronic on the streets. If housing prices continue to remain as they are, many more people will have difficulty finding housing. This is on the rise.” What she means is that residential exclusion is on the rise.
This is the reality of an island where reports almost boastful of investment opportunities for those who can afford them will seem like an affront to someone reduced to living in a tent.