Genivs Insulae, the first investment company with social impact in supervised housing by the CNMV, has made public this Wednesday an agreement with the Social Impact Fund (FIS), dependent on the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations and managed by Cofides, by which this vehicle will allocate up to 20 million euros to the company to promote 3,000 affordable rental homes on public land aimed at young people.
The announcement was made during the "Social Housing and Impact Investment" day, organized by this social housing infrastructure fund, in which institutional representatives and social promoters have claimed a stable collaboration to generate a stock of affordable housing with a clear social impact.
The meeting, held at the Palau Macaya of the La Caixa Foundation, is part of the Barcelona4Impact Week, which from October 9 to 16 brings together the main agents of the impact ecosystem.
At the opening, the advisor to the Presidency of the La Caixa Foundation, Jaume Lanaspa, welcomed the attendees and emphasized the deep-rooted culture of home buying in Spain until the 2008 crisis, when the construction of apartments came to a halt and they became an "attractive" investment for small owners and funds, favoring the expansion of tourist apartments and placing Madrid, Barcelona, or Málaga on the radar of international investors.
He stressed that housing is an element of "social cohesion and identity generation, as long as there is stability, which is why initiatives like those presented today are so important, as they allow for the merging of social and individual interests, with public-private collaboration."
Institutional Boost and Public-Private Collaboration
The Secretary General of Inclusion of the Government, Elena Rodríguez, has warned that the housing challenge is too complex to face in isolation: "We need to combine efforts, first combine wills. There is consensus, housing has put it on the political agenda. But we also need to combine capacities and resources," referring to public-private collaboration formulas.
He recalled the launch in June 2024 of the FIS, endowed with 400 million euros, with the aim of demonstrating that public investment can act as a lever to attract private capital towards projects of interest: "The public sector guarantees rights, but it has the capacity to innovate, to generate and increase resources. Every euro committed has mobilized 3.4 additional euros of investment, that is, 1.3 billion."
The deputy mayor of Economy, Jordi Valls, has demanded to consider housing as social, human, and environmental capital, but has warned that "but anyone who thinks that the public sector will fix this alone is mistaken, alliances must be established with the financial sector, which must invest, we need alliances with developers, with the social sector, with cooperatives."
"The market will take us where it has to take us, but it has shown that it does not solve everything, administrations can do much more and must intervene, but I am not in favor of intervening in everything," he added, betting on tax incentives and licenses, and defending the existence of funds, with a certain profitability, that support developers.
The president of Genivs, Rafael Angulo Ruiz, has pointed out that the event culminates four years of work since the start of "this good social impact fund" and has presented a video about the alliance between the public and private sectors that has allowed Genivs to become the first social housing infrastructure fund in Europe.
Currently, Genivs has accumulated 1,142 homes awarded in Málaga and Zaragoza, 564 in bids submitted in Madrid and Barcelona, and 784 homes in the study phase.
Round table on affordable housing and impact investment
Subsequently, a round table has been held with the participation of the president of Habitat3, Carme Trilla; the director of Investments of Cofides, Raúl Sánchez; the director of Provivienda, Eduardo Gutiérrez; the president of Metropolitan House, Rafael Angulo Cordero, and the director of Impact of Genivs Insulae, Hugo Sintes, moderated by the president of Mans Unides Barcelona, Silvia Caparrós.
Raul Sánchez has described impact investment as "capital with soul," which has intentionality, can be measured, and is sustainable over time, a goal that Cofides claims to have within the framework of another way of doing things.
Rafael Angulo Cordero has claimed "housing to be proud of" and has indicated that the projects of Metropolitan House are oriented towards a dignified environment, with energy efficiency and good finishes; he has also demanded more public investment to make it possible.
Hugo Sintes has detailed that Genivs is born to respond to the need for protected rental housing for vulnerable people through an investment with return, supported by a model "that works financially and economically," always on public land.
For her part, Carme Trilla has considered social support in these protected rental projects to be key, which has motivated the creation of an entity like Habitat3, similar to other international reference ones, "to help the people living in these houses to make progress, even the possibility of buying, or to guarantee coexistence, because society demands efficiency in public housing."
Eduardo Gutiérrez has pointed out that access to housing problems increasingly affect more diverse groups, which is why he advocates building more "but intelligently, to respond to the needs of people," and has called for a new management model and an ecosystem of actors with a vocation for permanence.
The Housing Commissioner of Barcelona, Joan Ramon Riera, has closed the day emphasizing that public-private collaboration in affordable housing is "urgent and necessary," as evidenced by recent social mobilizations.
"We must live up to expectations and respond swiftly," Riera has stated, who has shown himself in favor of cooperating to articulate a solution that youth urgently demands.