A/HRC/44/40/Add.2 not provide estimates of how much of the system had been privatized or assessments of the impact. Autonomous communities 35. Autonomous communities bear significant responsibility for social protection, but austerity-related funding cuts have significantly affected their ability to invest in it, undermined their capacity to combat poverty and negatively impacted many people. Total social spending by autonomous communities in 2018, including on health care, education and social protection, was still 3.4 per cent lower than before the crisis, despite significantly increased demand as a result of the crisis and its after-effects.50 B. Housing 36. Despite the Government’s recognition that housing is crucial to addressing poverty, remarkably little has been done to secure the right to housing. According to the FOESSA Foundation, 24 per cent of the population faced housing exclusion in 2018 and 4.6 million people lived in inadequate housing. 51 Housing costs are rising at alarming rates. The affordability of the private rental market is amongst the lowest in the OECD and more than 38 per cent of private tenants paying market rates are overburdened by the cost of rent. 52 The Bank of Spain found that the price of rental housing increased by more than 50 per cent from 2013 to 2019,53 while salaries have lost 7.8 per cent of their purchasing power in the last decade. Spain has also come under fire for allowing private equity and investment firms to purchase low-income and affordable housing and then substantially raise rents, forcing tenants out of their homes.54 At one housing block outside Madrid, people said their rents had doubled overnight as a result of the decision to sell large-scale social housing to Blackstone. 37. The rise in housing costs has been accompanied by shocking rates of evictions. The annual number of evictions rose from 16,097 in 2006 to 59,671 in 2018, with a total of 712,723 evictions between 2006 and the third quarter of 2019. 55 That is an incomplete picture that does not account for the evictions of squatters or the total number of people affected. 38. Despite the clear need, low cost rental housing is almost non-existent: just 2.7 per cent of the population was renting below the market rate as of 2018.56 Housing Europe estimates that social housing in Spain comprises 2.5 per cent of the national occupied housing stock, compared with 30 per cent in the Netherlands, 24 per cent in Austria, 17.6 per cent in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and 16.8 per cent in France.57 In addition, new construction of public housing has plummeted from 63,900 new 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 Asociación Estatal de Directoras y Gerentes en Servicios Sociales, “El gasto social por comunidades: sanidad, educación y servicios sociales” (September 2019), p. 1. Fundación FOESSA, “Rights violation: housing”, pp. 2–3, available from https://caritasweb.s3.amazonaws.com/main-files/uploads/sites/16/2019/06/FOESSA.-Focus-Housing_EN.pdf. Eurostat, “Housing cost overburden rate by tenure status – EU-SILC survey” (2018). Submission from Amnesty International, available from www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Poverty/VisitSpainSubmissions/31_Amnesty_International.docx p. 4; David López-Rodríguez y María de los Llanos Matea, “Evolución reciente del mercado del alquiler de vivienda en España”, Banco de España Boletin Economico, (August 2019), p. 6. OHCHR, “States and real estate private equity firms questioned for compliance with human rights”, March 26, 2019. Figures from 2006–2012 available from https://bit.ly/2S2DoBo; figures from 2013–2018 available from https://bit.ly/382hT95 (in Spanish). National Institute of Statistics, “Households, by tenancy regime of the dwelling, and age and sex of the reference person”. Housing Europe, “The State of Housing in the EU, 2019” (October 2019), available from www.housingeurope.eu/resource-1323/the-state-of-housing-in-the-eu-2019. 9