The Generalitat is due to approve its Regenera housing renewal programme today, Tuesday 22 September, committing €255 million a year to refurbish homes and increase publicly owned housing across Catalonia.

Residents in vulnerable census areas, older town centres and rural municipalities are the programme’s stated priority groups. The largest allocation, €75 million a year, is for comprehensive building renewal in vulnerable neighbourhoods, where 560,000 homes more than 45 years old are located in census sections identified as especially vulnerable.

Territory, Housing and Ecological Transition Minister Sílvia Paneque and ERC parliamentary group leader Ester Capella presented the scheme in Esparreguera on Monday. The programme is due to run for three years, with its six action lines expected to start between now and the first quarter of 2027.

“We want to bring homes back into use, improve the condition of buildings and help neighbourhoods recover,” Capella said.

Most funding reserved for vulnerable neighbourhoods

The programme combines €190 million a year from the Generalitat’s own budget with €65 million in financing from the Institut Català de Finances, or ICF, Catalonia’s public finance institute.

According to the presentation, 60% of Catalonia’s roughly four million homes were built before 1980. Regenera is intended to address ageing housing, bring empty or underused homes back into use and acquire buildings for the public housing stock.

  • €75 million a year for comprehensive renewal in vulnerable neighbourhoods and older vulnerable urban areas.
  • €50 million a year for refurbishment outside the areas of greatest vulnerability.
  • €6 million a year for local support offices and €6 million for assessments of the housing stock.
  • €44 million a year to buy empty or unfinished buildings for public housing, with half reserved for rural municipalities.
  • €50 million a year in ICF loans for communities of property owners, plus €15 million to help public bodies buy buildings.

The Generalitat also plans to create a specialist team of 25 professionals to advise on recovering properties and to support processing of renovation aid.

Four aims: social housing, rural access and fewer barriers

Paneque said the plan has four central aims: expand the social housing stock, refurbish homes in socioeconomically vulnerable areas, improve access to housing in rural municipalities, and reduce the technical, administrative and financial barriers to renovation.

“It is a tool for investing in social housing,” Paneque said.

She said the programme is designed particularly for municipalities without a comprehensive Pla de Barris, the Generalitat’s neighbourhood regeneration scheme, but which need action in specific parts of their area. The first Regenera measures are scheduled to be operating by the end of March 2027.

Reported by Institut Català de Finances, Regió 7.