The Spanish government will pay 250 euros ($284) a month to low-income youths to help them cut the cord in a country where more and more young adults live with their parents because they cannot afford to rent.
Housing Minister Raquel Sanchez told a news conference after the weekly Cabinet meeting this afternoon that starting this month, Spaniards under the age of 35 and with an annual income below 24,318 euros can request the monthly subsidy to rent an apartment for two years.
The subsidy "is an important element so that housing (prices) stop being such a hurdle for youth emancipation," she said.
Spain has one of the highest shares of young people living with their parents in Europe, as many as 55% of 25-29 year-olds in 2020, according to the latest official data, up by 6.5 percentage points since 2013.
That number strongly correlates with endemically high youth unemployment in Spain, where 29% of people under 25 register as jobless.
However, direct subsidies to pay rents may be less effective than the government hopes as increased demand for small apartments will likely drive prices higher, said Francisco Inareta, a spokesman for Idealista, the country's largest real estate website.
"Prior experiences have shown that the main consequence is a direct price increase," he said, adding that renters who earn just above the announced limit would likely feel discriminated having to pay more without getting subsidies.
6 comments
To be able to write a comment, you have to be registered and logged in
Hello George, may i ask about your experience in the 1970's? I, as a first time buyer in the 1970's in order to get a mortgage had to be trapeze artist, if you had no savings account with a Building Society you had NO chance, and even then you had to have an exemplary record. So please do not think that those aged 70+ now had an easy time, we did not, and in the 1980's you might (?) remember the mortgage rate went up to 15%+, but then I surmise you do not remember those days except as a baby in nappies, or perhaps you were somebodies dream yet to come.
Please note, and what the article doesn’t mention, is that this subsidy only applies to rents of € 600 or below.
The problem with Socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other peoples money !
Affordable housing doesn’t exist for my generation anywhere not even the UK. Unlike in the 70s/80/s you could comfortably afford a mortgage with one job… now you have to have more than two jobs to even qualify. Especially here in the Balearics… a huge percentage of people who live here don’t earn enough to even qualify for a mortgage. The property market is aimed at foreigners and there’s nothing livable on the market for the average joe. Infact the only thing you could probably get is a run down shell of a house that you need to then put several hundred thousand in on refurbishments. I don’t know a single estate agents that isn’t designed to cater to the foreign market here.
Helping people is always good, unlike what the right wing parties do.
A cynic could possibly think that this a vote buyer for the PSOE/UP paid for by the tax payer.