A/HRC/44/40/Add.2 units in 2008 to 2,737 in 2018.58 Meanwhile, the most recent national housing census in 2011 found 3.4 million vacant homes, while Housing Europe estimates that there were 3.8 million in 2017.59 39. Statistics on homelessness are inadequate, but the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality estimated that there were between 27,500 and 33,000 homeless people in 201560 and the FOESSA Foundation estimates that another 2 million people are at risk of homelessness.61 The policy response is often incoherent. In Extremadura, one official stated that they “don’t have homelessness”. Preventative policies are practically nonexistent62 and people affected by homelessness stressed the serious difficulty of accessing social services without a permanent address, preventing those in the most precarious situations from getting the support to which they are entitled. Among homeless people, 19.8 per cent did not have a health-care card as of 2015, including 32.7 per cent of foreign nationals.63 Autonomous communities should urgently rectify this situation and approach housing as a right, implement housing-first policies and pursue preventative strategies that emphasize intervention and support before people are thrown out on the street. 40. Furthermore, almost 10 per cent of the population could not afford to keep their dwelling at an adequate temperature in 2018 – people are obliged to choose between heating their homes and feeding their children. Spain should expand access to the social bonus that subsidizes utility payments for those who need it and ensure that utilities are not cut off in vulnerable households. The law on energy poverty in Catalonia, the outcome of sustained housing advocacy, is a step in the right direction. 41. Discussions with key officials in the national Government revealed a deep mismatch between needs and the policy responses being considered. No one doubts that urgent measures are required. A national housing plan for the period 2018–2021 includes an allocation of 20,000 public housing units over four years 64 but that is a far cry from what is needed. New laws that increase the minimum length of rental contracts and discharge housing debt in the event of foreclosure and repossession are positive developments, although the latter should be applied retroactively. 42. Spain should substantially increase the availability of low-cost housing, but that will bring little short-term relief. Based on much past experience, a proposed significant reliance on public-private partnerships is likely to benefit the middle classes but not those most dramatically affected. While rent controls have been embraced in Barcelona, they remain controversial at the national level and were given short shrift by central government officials. This seems to be a mistake and it is not clear that official analyses of the options have been either thorough or probing. The experience in Paris, Berlin and an increasing number of cities in the United States of America indicates that rent stabilization schemes can work well, provided they are carefully designed to avoid the clumsiness and inflexibility of schemes devised decades ago in very different circumstances. 65 In addition, 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 10 Ministerio de Fomento, “Vivienda protegida, series annual, (1.5) número de calificaciones definitivas: planes estatales” (2019), available from https://apps.fomento.gob.es/BoletinOnline2/sedal/ 31305000.XLS (in Spanish). National Institute of Statistics, “Censos de población y viviendas 2011”, available from https://inmalome.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/cifine01-2013.pdf, p. 8; Housing Europe, “The State of Housing in the EU 2019”, p. 85. Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, “Comprehensive national strategy for the homeless 2015–2020” (November 2015), p. 19. See www.caritas.es/noticias/viii-informe-foessa-la-exclusion-social-se-enquista-en-una-sociedadcada-vez-mas-desvinculada/ (in Spanish). Gregorio Rodríguez Cabrero and others, “ESPN thematic report on national strategies to fight homelessness and housing exclusion: Spain”, European Social Policy Network (2019), p. 12. Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, “Comprehensive national strategy for the homeless 2015–2020”, p. 25. OECD, Economic Surveys: Spain (November 2018), p. 98. Manuel Pastor, Vanessa Carter, and Maya Abood, “Rent matters: what are the impacts of rent stabilization measures?”, University of Southern California Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (2018).