Act on social housing in the region of Madrid

On June 20, the plenary meeting of the Assembly of Madrid approved the Act on urban planning measures to promote social housing (the Act), which was published in Official Gazette of the Assembly of Madrid no. 58, of June 27.

This new Act reinforces the amendments that Act 11/2022, of December 21, adopting urgent measures to boost economic activity and modernize the region’s public administration, introduced into Act 9/2001, of July 17, the Land Act of the Autonomous Region of Madrid, allowing the network of social housing subject to a protection regime to be implemented on vacant plots of the services network and the facilities network.

The first article introduces an amendment to Act 9/2001 regarding the requirements to implement housing subject to a protection regime on vacant plots of the services network and the facilities network. The new Act specifies that a special plan is only required to implement the use of social housing subject to a lease arrangement when it is necessary to define specific urban planning or plotting parameters that make the implementation viable. Also, it assigns one parking space per residence.

Likewise, it establishes that to ensure the proper development of the supramunicipal public networks of the Autonomous Region of Madrid, the regional government can process a special plan to modify any urban planning provisions set out in the regional or municipal land-use planning concerning plots included in these networks subject to the limits imposed under the new drafting of article 67.1 of Act 9/2001.

The second article regulates the biggest change introduced by the Act, namely the implementation of special regime for social housing subject to a lease arrangement. With the appropriate license, residential use can be implemented as an alternative use on plots (even those that have been built) on consolidated or non-consolidated urban land and on sectorized developable land with detailed planning, classified as tertiary office use.

This special regime is established with the following particularities:

• Residential use can be implemented as an alternative as long as, while still subject to a protection regime, it is aimed at one of the types of social housing subject to a lease arrangement applicable in the Autonomous Region of Madrid.
• No planning needs to be modified as long as plots have detailed planning that allows its implementation.
• Partial implementation is not permitted. Residential use must be implemented in the whole building.
• The alternative use of social housing cannot exceed 30% of the overall buildable tertiary use of the sector.
• If the developments do not increase the building area, the change of use must comply with the transfer of local public networks corresponding to allocation actions, as provided under article 19. bis. 2. d) 4 of Act 9/2001, of July 17, the Land Act of the Autonomous Region of Madrid. This obligation may be fulfilled with a monetary payment.
• City councils will have four months from its entry into force to set limits, apply further conditions and even decide not to allow the implementation of this alternative use.
• Once the four-month term has elapsed from the entry into force of the Act, applicants will have two years to request the corresponding licenses and three years to finish the works from the date they started.