![Sample our Geography journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5937/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Geography.jpg"})
Abstract
The high rates of unemployment, the precarious labour market and the limited affordability of homeownership have increased delayed housing emancipation among European young adults (aged 18–29 years). As a consequence, many of them have become more dependent on their parents and the creation of new households has slowed down. These features are particularly evident in Spain, where young adults start living away from their parental home on average when they are 30, a trend that has been aggravated by the economic crisis. In 2007, the Spanish Government addressed this issue by implementing the Renta Básica de Emancipación (RBE) to support young adults' transitions to adulthood by increasing the rental housing market offer and by making the rental expenditure more affordable for them, despite their employment instability. This review examines how the RBE was implemented between 2007 and 2012 and its impacts on young adults' emancipation and the private rented sector in Spain.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The Spanish housing market depends on the state-aided actions of the Central Government and the competencies shared by regional administrations. The first is in charge of coordinating housing as an economic sector; the Autonomous Communities are authorised to complement the central state's housing policies with their own resources, and are responsible for establishing housing and land-use regulations, developing and managing owner-occupied and private rental housing stock as well as public housing provision on their territory.
2. This Ministry had been integrated into the Ministry of Development in 2010.
3. The available data in 2007 came from the Housing Census (2001) completed by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the Rental Demand Survey by the Ministry of Development (2003), and the Housing Tenure Survey by the Ministry of Housing (2006): according to these sources, available private rental housing in Spain was respectively 1.60, 1.10 and 1.79 million.
4. The Labour Force Survey of the INE shows that, in the second trimester of 2007, there were 57,800 more people employed than in 2006, but there were 302,100 less youth (16–29 years old) employed. Almost 52% of people under 30 were working with temporary contracts in 2007, the highest rate among young adults in the EU.
5. In the OECD countries, the average disposable income of young people aged 18–25 years fell in real terms by 1% per year (4% in Spain) between 2007 and 2011 (OECD, Citation2014).
6. The quantity of the benefit was divided by the number of residents on the rental contract: each tenant could request the RBE.
7. By the end of 2007 in Spain, around eight out of ten young employees were in this situation.
8. Rent contracts among close family members were not accepted; the recipient could not be a homeowner.
9. This loan had to be paid back once the deposit no longer was needed or when the prerequisites were no longer met.
10. The RBE should have taken action a month after the request was approved. If the money was more than three months late, the beneficiaries could have claimed this right and requested cumulative interest for the lapse of time and they would have covered the months already paid for because the approval of the aid was retroactive.
11. According to the original regulation of the RBE, four years after it was put into vigour, the Ministry of Housing (later the Ministry of Development) had to send the Council of Ministers a report updating and evaluating the results of the policy, including budgetary needs, modifications and repeals. This means that, since the beginning, no end date was ever established for this subsidy.
