Some 10,000 young people from Bilbao with incomes need a home, but prices do not allow it

According to Jon Bilbao, the delegate councilor of the Housing area of ​​the Bilbao City Council, it is estimated that about 10,000 people from Bilbao between 18 and 44 years old with income they need a home. “They could pay a rent, but still the situation and the prices do not allow it,” he said.

Jon Bilbao presented this Thursday the main results of the diagnosis of housing in the town in 2020. He pointed out that, according to data from the Basque Youth Observatory, about 37,000 people between the ages of 18 and 34 still resided in the family home in 2020.

The Bilbao City Council plans to start applying the fee to empty homes within a year and a half, 2122 in the villa that are likely to be mobilized to the rental market of the 4358 identified as uninhabited in 2020.

As he has pointed out, among the main conclusions of the diagnosis carried out in 2020, the identification of 4,358 empty homes in Bilbao stands out, a figure very similar to that of 2018, when there were 4,240, of which 2,122 have been in that situation for at least two years for what are considered capable of being mobilized for rental.

Jon Bilbao has specified that the criterion used to consider an empty home is that “They do not have registration and water consumption is zero”.

Although the City Council has not evaluated it, the sale of vacant homes “is going to have an impact” on the market because “the more offers we have, the prices can be contained”, he stressed. In any case, to achieve the objective of containing rental prices, he has said that other measures are needed that must be approved by the Basque Government or the councils.

After specifying that the objective of the Bilbao City Council is “to mobilize housing so that it fulfills its social function” and that “it is not about collecting”, has explained that, firstly, they will get in touch with homeowners who have been unoccupied for more than two years to “explain the situation, try to mobilize them and even facilitate their mobilization.”

“If after all this someone is still determined not to move their home, a fee will have to be applied,” he said, to indicate that this will occur “at least within a year and a half,” since throughout 2022 the information process will be carried out and it will be looked at “case by case”.

Regarding the canon to be applied, it has indicated that the decree marks 10 euros / m2 the first year and can be increased by 30% if in successive years the house would continue without mobilizing. “I wish we did not have to apply any canon and most of the homes that may be capable of living in them are occupied,” he confided.