Defense will receive more than 500 million for the land to build 20,000 social housing

The Ministry of Defense will receive more than 500 million euros for the land on which the Government plans to build 20,000 social housing, in compliance with the announcement made on April 25 in the Senate by President Pedro Sánchez, according to government sources.

The Council of Ministers is expected to approve on the 9th the signing of an agreement between the Institute for Defense Housing and Equipment (Invied), under the Ministry of Defense, and the Public Business Land Company (Sepes), from the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, through which the latter will acquire a lot of land distributed throughout Spain that has been disaffected from the defense;

that is, they have ceased to have a military interest.

The approval of the agreement, scheduled for last week, was delayed due to the need to close the last fringes of the agreement and incorporate land that was not initially part of the lot, so that the operation would allow the release of land for social rental housing in all the autonomous communities and most of the provinces.

This has also caused the final amount to be paid for the land to vary, which totals millions of square meters.

Defensa will sell the entire batch of plots at a fixed price, once the corresponding appraisals have been made and the fair price has been agreed.

In total, Transport will pay more than 500 million, which will mean a significant injection into the Defense budget, which this year has grown by 26%.

The commitment assumed by President Sánchez at the last NATO summit, held in June of last year in Madrid, is to reach 2% of GDP in military spending in 2029, but this objective seems distant judging by the 2023 Stability Plan -26 sent by the Government to Brussels.

According to said document, Spain will allocate 1.2% of GDP to defense this year (one tenth more than last year), but it will not exceed 1.3 in the next three years.

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For Defense, the operation is very profitable, since it will not only dispose of land and buildings that have ceased to be of use to the Armed Forces, in exchange for funds that can be invested in modernizing them, but it will also save the money that now spend on their security and upkeep.

The town halls and autonomous communities to which land is ceded for the construction of subsidized housing will not cost anything for the operation, as clarified by the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero.

Contrary to what has happened on other occasions, when Defense has directly transferred land to local institutions, this time it will be the central State (through Sepes) that will bear the cost.

In any case, the process will be long, since it will be necessary to proceed with the urban redevelopment of land that until now was classified as for military use and that will have to be converted into residential.

This is not the first land sale carried out in recent months by Defense.

At the beginning of April, the Government injected 260 million into the Sepes for the purchase of land of the so-called Camp Operation, where it is planned to build 12,000 homes, 60% protected.

Defense has also sold 214,000 square meters of the Getafe air base (Madrid) for the construction of 1,450 homes for 35.4 million;

and the Son Busquets barracks, in Palma de Mallorca, where 800 homes will be built, for 43 million.

In total, the Invied, an autonomous body of the Ministry of Defense, manages 11,173 properties, of which 9,620 are military homes and 206 plots or plots, according to its 2021 annual report, when it entered 53.1 million from the sale of land.

At the end of that year, it had 546 properties for sale or auction that had ceased to have military interest.

It was about "roads, runways, roads and branches, barracks, disused airfields, shooting ranges and maneuvers, urban and rustic plots and unique buildings".

The community with the most properties available was Andalucía (150), followed by Ceuta (71), Madrid (65), Galicia (63), Castilla-La Mancha (39) and Castilla y León (29).

At the tail, Cantabria (1), La Rioja (2) and Navarra (3).

The plan to promote the construction of 20,000 flats for social rental on land owned by the Ministry of Defense is just one of the measures announced by the Government under the banner of turning housing into the fourth pillar of the welfare state (after health, education , pensions and dependency) and that access to it ceases to be an unattainable luxury for a large part of society, especially young people.

In recent weeks, on the eve of the campaign for the regional and municipal elections on May 28, the Government has promised the construction of 183,000 social housing and has approved the first housing law, which aims to cap rent increases in the so-called stress zones.

In any case,

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