The Barcelona Municipal Housing and Rehabilitation Institute (IMHAB) has commenced the works of the future public building of 139 homes at Porta Trinitat, in the Trinitat Vella neighbourhood (Sant Andreu). 85 of these homes will be for rental for senior citizens and the remaining 54 will be for social rental. In total, 260 persons will be able to live in affordable homes.
The ceremony of laying the first stone had the participation of Lucía Martín, the Councillor for the District of Sant Andreu and Councillor for Housing and Rehabilitation; Gemma Tarafa, the Councillor for Health, Ageing and Cures, and representatives of the mosque, the Neighbours’ Association of Trinitat Vella and the Senior Citizens’ Centre, among other entities of the Trinitat Vella neighbourhood.
The works will have a duration of a little over two years, so the building will be completed in the third quarter of 2023. The investment for the construction of this building will be 14 million euros.
Homes for specific collectives
The residential building will extend 100 metres to the Carretera de Ribes, at the corner with Via Favència and in front of the Plaça de Josep Andreu i Abelló, and will have two differentiated heights, with independent entrances for the two collectives to whom the homes are addressed: senior citizens and social rental. The lower block, with six floors, will contain 54 social rental homes, and the higher block, with eleven floors, will contain 85 homes for senior citizens. On the ground floor there will also be two premises for communal facilities, a bike park and a passage for facilitating access to the rear of the building.
In regard to the social rental homes, one half will have two rooms, one quarter will have one room and the other quarter three rooms. All the homes will be organised around an access corridor with three inner courtyards which will collect daylight and provide cross-ventilation.
The senior citizens’ homes, for their part, will have one single bedroom, and the common spaces will be located on the fifth floor. These will be three meeting rooms of 50 m2 and a fourth of 20m2 for small-format activities. The residents will also have access to the gardened roof terrace, where a communal laundry will be installed.
Impulse for the Sant Andreu district
This promotion forms part of the Porta Trinitat complex, with which the City Council is constructing a complete focal point of social amenities and public housing in Trinitat Vella, one Barcelona’s districts with the lowest family incomes, and it provides a response to historic demands from the neighbours for more social attention services and an increase of the affordable housing stock. In Porta Trinitat there will be affordable housing for various social collectives and public facilities which will include attention services for the citizens, and specifically for women and young people, and social services. The work of this project began in summer 2020 and will continue until early 2022.
The Sant Andreu district is also the one which concentrates a large part of Barcelona’s public housing under construction, due, above all, to the transformation of the “cheap houses” of Bon Pastor and the old Sant Andreu barracks. In total, there are 670 homes which signify affordable housing for over 1,500 persons.
More social and temporary housing for senior citizens
The City Council opts for the promotion of affordable housing addressed to all social collectives and conceived to fulfil their needs. For this reason it has undertaken projects of social and temporary homes for senior citizens. This spring the keys have been delivered to the 49 apartments of the last building of this type in the city, in Carrer d’Alí Bei in the Eixample district, and in total Barcelona has 25 developments and 1,433 homes for senior citizens.
Counting the Porta Trinitat development, there are now six more under construction and in the planning stage, with a total volume of 500 apartments. These are the following:
- Carrer de Puigcerdà, 100-104: 48 homes. Under construction.
- Carrer de Viladomat, 142 (Germanetes): 47 homes. Under construction.
- Passeig de Torras i Bages, 143 (Barracks): 152 homes. Under construction.
- Avinguda de la Mare de Déu de Montserrat, 5-11 (former Quirón Clinic): 83 homes. In the planning stage.
- Carrer de Veneçuela, 96-106: 60 homes. In the planning stage.