A/HRC/34/51 and real estate could play an important role in redirecting investment towards the social use of housing and advancing the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. 66. Business and human rights guidelines in the housing sector must recognize the responsibility of private investors and the obligations of regulators of capital markets to ensure that the needs of vulnerable and marginalized groups are adequately addressed through inclusive investment strategies and to contribute to the realization of the right to housing and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda. VI. Policy responses to the financialization of housing 67. Policy responses to the financialization of housing have tended to prioritize support for financial institutions over responding to the needs of those whose right to adequate housing is at stake. Spending on bailouts of banks and financial institutions after the 2008 financial crisis far outstripped spending to provide assistance to the victims of the crisis. In fact, many national Governments made substantial cuts to their housing programmes. As noted above, the World Bank continues to promote “financial liberalization” rather than active State intervention in housing provision in emerging economies, despite the evidence that financialization generally increases inequality and fails to address the needs of the millions of households living in situations of homelessness or grossly inadequate informal housing.76 68. Nonetheless, a number of subnational and national governments have started to address the effects of excess capital flows and financialization on affordability and access to housing for low-income households. Initiatives have been advanced at both national and subnational levels providing a number of tools that can at least curb the excesses of financialization and mitigate its effects. 69. In response to the mortgage crisis in Spain, the autonomous regions of Andalusia and Catalonia introduced progressive laws explicitly affirming the social function of housing and facilitating temporary expropriation of vacant housing. 77 Catalonian legislation also prohibited foreclosures and evictions that would result in homelessness.78 Both of those regional initiatives were struck down by the Constitutional Court as encroaching on the jurisdiction of the national Government and opposing the general economic interests of the country.79 In response, at least in the case of Catalonia, the legislation was reintroduced with amendments and was passed by the Catalonian parliament. 80 70. A number of States, including Austria, China, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, have instituted restrictions on foreign purchasers of residential real estate. The province of British Columbia in Canada has introduced a 15 per cent foreign homeowner 76 77 78 79 80 See International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and World Bank Group, “World Bank Group support for housing finance”. See also Aalbers, The Financialization of Housing, p. 73. See Aalbers, The Financialization of Housing, p. 73. See Autonomous Region of Catalonia, Spain, Ley 24/2015, de 29 de julio, de medidas urgentes para afrontar la emergencia en el ámbito de la vivienda y la pobreza energética, arts. 2, 3 and 4, and Regional Government of Andalusia, Decreto-Ley 6/2013, de 9 de abril, de medidas para asegurar el cumplimiento de la Función Social de la Vivienda. See www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2015-6831 (BOE-A-2015-6831, 19 June 2015), and www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2016-5337, (BOE-A-2016-5337, 3 June 2016). See Clara Blanchar, “Cataluña recupera la ley contra los desahucios que anuló el Constitucional”, El País, 22 December 2016. 19