On 16 February, the Archbishop of Tarragona Joan Planellas and Salvador Illa, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, signed a four-year-agreement whereby the Church will retain ownership of the properties but loan them for fixed periods.
The Generalitat will provide finance and infrastructure to build social housing on ecclesial properties including decaying rectories, dilapidated seminaries and plots of land.
Archbishop Planellas said: “Lack of housing is one of the chief issues in Catalan society, where 25 per cent of the populace has some kind of social exclusion problem in terms of housing.”
The Church owns some properties whose alternative use has been obstructed by a lack of funds or by complex urban planning rules, he explained. The agreement will allow the Generalitat to establish suitable conditions for building properties.
A working group composed of five members of the 10 Catalan dioceses and five members of the Generalitat will oversee the implementation of the agreement. The group’s mandate is to study the viability of building projects, propose any necessary changes in regulations and to guarantee the new housing is given to vulnerable groups, according to standards of transparency and equality.
The four-year initial term of the agreement may be prolonged. Each year a special commission will monitor the fulfilment of the aims of the agreement and analyse the results.
Illa said the idea arose from a similar agreement in Malta, whose government agreed last summer to loan land to a Church foundation so it could develop housing costing on average 30 per cent less than those on the free market.
The working group’s first task is to make an inventory of the properties and land offered by the Church across Catalonia.
One problem is that some of the land concerned cannot be used to build homes straightaway because it is classified as being for religious use only. Before any building work may take place, it must go through a process to obtain the correct permits for building in urban areas.