B1 · Intermediate
12 min
housingeconomyurban policylegislation
396 to 13: America Tries to Fix Its Housing Problem
Cuatrocientos noventa y seis votos para un sueño americano
The U.S. House just passed a sweeping housing affordability bill 396 to 13, a vote so lopsided it almost looks like a typo. Fletcher and Octavio dig into how America's housing crisis got this bad, what the bill actually tries to do, and what Spain's own housing struggles reveal about a problem that turns out to be universal.
La Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos aprobó esta semana una nueva ley de vivienda con un apoyo bipartidista casi sin precedentes. Fletcher y Octavio analizan cómo llegó Estados Unidos a esta crisis, qué puede aprender de Europa, y por qué construir casas resulta tan difícil en el país más rico del mundo.
6 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| asequible | affordable, within reach | En muchas ciudades, los alquileres no son asequibles para los jóvenes. |
| vivienda | housing, home, dwelling | El gobierno aprobó una nueva ley de vivienda para ayudar a las familias. |
| alquiler | rent, rental | El alquiler subió mucho en Madrid en los últimos años. |
| aprobar | to pass, to approve | La Cámara de Representantes aprobó la ley con casi cuatrocientos votos. |
| permiso | permit, permission | Para construir un edificio, necesitas un permiso del ayuntamiento. |
| oferta | supply, offer | El problema de la vivienda es un problema de oferta: no hay suficientes casas. |
When was the last time anything cleared the House of Representatives 396 to 13?
I mean, they can't agree on the time of day, and this week they passed a housing bill with votes to spare.
Mira, cuando un proyecto de ley pasa con casi cuatrocientos votos, hay dos explicaciones posibles.
Look, when a bill passes with nearly four hundred votes, there are two possible explanations.
O es una cosa sin importancia, o el problema es tan grave que ya nadie puede ignorarlo.
Either it's something trivial, or the problem is so serious that nobody can ignore it anymore.
And this one is definitely not trivial.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which now goes to the Senate for any revisions, is aimed squarely at the cost of housing and cost of living across the United States.
Es que la situación en Estados Unidos es muy seria.
The situation in the United States is very serious.
En muchas ciudades, las personas con un salario normal no pueden pagar un apartamento.
In many cities, people with a normal salary can't afford an apartment.
Los precios subieron mucho en los últimos años y no bajaron.
Prices rose a lot in recent years and never came back down.
Right.
And the thing is, this isn't just a post-COVID spike that corrected itself.
The underlying problem has been building for decades.
The U.S.
simply has not built enough housing to keep up with where people actually want to live.
La verdad es que esto pasa en muchos países.
The truth is this happens in many countries.
En España también hay una crisis de vivienda.
Spain also has a housing crisis.
En Madrid, en Barcelona, en las ciudades de la costa, los alquileres son muy altos.
In Madrid, in Barcelona, in coastal cities, rents are very high.
Los jóvenes no pueden encontrar un piso a buen precio.
Young people can't find an apartment at a reasonable price.
We'll definitely get to Spain.
But let me back up for a second, because I think it's worth asking: how did the richest country on earth end up in a situation where a working family can't afford a house near where the jobs are?
Hay varias razones.
There are several reasons.
Una razón importante es que en muchas ciudades americanas es muy difícil obtener permiso para construir.
One important reason is that in many American cities it's very difficult to get permission to build.
Los trámites son largos, los vecinos dicen que no quieren más edificios cerca de sus casas, y al final no se construye nada.
The bureaucratic process is long, neighbors say they don't want more buildings near their homes, and in the end nothing gets built.
NIMBY.
Not In My Backyard.
I lived through this in Austin, actually.
My neighborhood went through a three-year fight over whether to allow a mid-rise apartment building two blocks from a light rail stop.
Two blocks.
Sí, y esto es exactamente el problema.
Yes, and that's exactly the problem.
Las personas que ya tienen una casa no quieren cambios en su barrio.
People who already own a home don't want changes in their neighborhood.
Pero las personas que necesitan una casa no tienen voz en esa decisión porque todavía no viven allí.
But people who need a home have no voice in that decision because they don't live there yet.
That asymmetry is the whole ballgame, really.
The people who benefit from restrictive zoning show up to the planning meetings.
The people who'd benefit from new housing aren't there yet because they can't afford to move to the area.
A ver, en España también existe este problema, pero la historia es diferente.
Look, in Spain this problem also exists, but the history is different.
Después de la crisis financiera de 2008, muchas familias perdieron sus casas porque no podían pagar sus hipotecas.
After the financial crisis of 2008, many families lost their homes because they couldn't pay their mortgages.
Fue una tragedia enorme.
It was an enormous tragedy.
I covered parts of that crisis.
The Spanish property bubble was genuinely stunning in scale.
Empty apartment blocks on the outskirts of cities that had never had a single resident.
Exacto.
Exactly.
España construyó demasiado entre 1995 y 2008, pero en los lugares equivocados.
Spain built too much between 1995 and 2008, but in the wrong places.
Construyeron en ciudades pequeñas y en el campo, donde no vivía nadie.
They built in small towns and in the countryside, where nobody was living.
Y después la crisis destruyó toda esa industria de la construcción.
And then the crisis destroyed the entire construction industry.
So the U.S.
problem is too many rules preventing construction where people actually want to live.
And Spain's problem was a construction frenzy in the wrong places followed by a total collapse.
Different diseases, similar symptom.
Sí, y ahora en España el problema es que no hay suficientes pisos de alquiler en las ciudades grandes.
Yes, and now in Spain the problem is that there aren't enough rental apartments in big cities.
Madrid y Barcelona tienen muchos turistas, muchos apartamentos de Airbnb, y los alquileres normales subieron mucho.
Madrid and Barcelona have many tourists, many Airbnb apartments, and regular rents went up a lot.
The Airbnb effect.
Barcelona declared a kind of war on short-term rentals a couple of years back.
The mayor basically said the city belongs to the people who live there, not to the tourism industry.
Y yo entiendo esa decisión, Fletcher.
And I understand that decision, Fletcher.
Cuando un vecino convierte su apartamento en un hotel pequeño, los otros vecinos pierden a sus vecinos.
When a neighbor converts their apartment into a small hotel, the other neighbors lose their neighbors.
El barrio cambia.
The neighborhood changes.
Deja de ser un barrio real y se convierte en una atracción turística.
It stops being a real neighborhood and becomes a tourist attraction.
You're preaching to the converted on that one.
Though I'll say, from the other side of the Atlantic, the American approach to this problem has historically been to just let the market sort it out.
And the market has not sorted it out.
Claro.
Of course.
Porque el mercado hace lo que es más rentable, no lo que la gente necesita.
Because the market does what is most profitable, not what people need.
Y construir casas asequibles no es tan rentable como construir apartamentos de lujo.
And building affordable homes is not as profitable as building luxury apartments.
Which is exactly why a bill like this one matters.
From what I can tell, the ROAD Act tries to push federal land into housing use, cut through some of the permitting red tape, and offer incentives to localities that actually allow more construction.
Eso es interesante, lo de las tierras federales.
That's interesting, the part about federal land.
El gobierno de Estados Unidos tiene mucha tierra en el oeste del país.
The U.S.
Si usan esa tierra para construir casas, puede ayudar en ciudades como Las Vegas, Phoenix, o Denver.
government owns a lot of land in the western part of the country.
That's been one of the more creative angles in the housing debate recently.
The federal government owns something like 28 percent of all land in the country, and most of it is sitting there.
Pero la pregunta real es: ¿va a funcionar?
But the real question is: is it going to work?
Porque aprobar una ley es una cosa.
Because passing a law is one thing.
Cambiar la realidad de las ciudades es otra cosa completamente diferente.
Changing the reality of cities is something completely different.
Fair.
And it still has to get through the Senate, which is where bipartisan enthusiasm tends to go to die.
But something about that 396-to-13 vote tells me there's genuine political will here.
Both parties went home to their constituents and heard the same thing: housing is too expensive.
Y eso es importante.
And that's important.
Cuando los políticos de la derecha y de la izquierda votan juntos, normalmente es porque el problema afecta a todo el mundo.
When politicians from the right and from the left vote together, it's usually because the problem affects everyone.
La crisis de vivienda no tiene ideología.
The housing crisis has no ideology.
Afecta a familias conservadoras y progresistas por igual.
It affects conservative and progressive families equally.
There's a generational dimension here too that I don't think gets enough attention.
Young Americans right now are essentially facing a choice between renting forever in a city where they can find work, or buying a home in a place where there's less opportunity.
That's a brutal tradeoff that previous generations didn't face in the same way.
En España pasa lo mismo.
The same happens in Spain.
Los jóvenes de treinta años viven con sus padres mucho más que antes.
Thirty-year-olds live with their parents much more than before.
No porque quieran, sino porque no tienen otra opción.
Not because they want to, but because they have no other option.
El alquiler es muy caro y comprar un piso es imposible sin ayuda de la familia.
Rent is very expensive and buying an apartment is impossible without help from family.
Which has a ripple effect on everything.
People delay having kids.
They delay building community.
They delay building wealth, because historically home ownership has been one of the primary ways that ordinary families accumulate assets across generations.
Sí, y esto es un cambio social muy grande.
Yes, and this is a very big social change.
Mis padres compraron su primer piso cuando eran jóvenes, con un salario normal.
My parents bought their first apartment when they were young, on a normal salary.
Hoy eso es casi imposible para muchos jóvenes en las ciudades grandes de España.
Today that's almost impossible for many young people in Spain's big cities.
I keep coming back to the infrastructure question.
Because part of what makes housing expensive near job centers is that we haven't built the transit systems that would let you live further out and still get to work in a reasonable amount of time.
You could expand the radius of where people can live if the trains actually worked.
Fletcher, esto es lo que España hace mejor que Estados Unidos.
Fletcher, this is something Spain does better than the United States.
Tenemos trenes rápidos entre ciudades.
We have fast trains between cities.
Puedes vivir en Toledo y trabajar en Madrid porque el tren tarda solo treinta minutos.
You can live in Toledo and work in Madrid because the train takes only thirty minutes.
Eso cambia todo.
That changes everything.
The Spanish high-speed rail network genuinely is impressive.
I've taken the AVE from Madrid to Seville, and by American standards it feels almost science fictional.
Meanwhile, the Amtrak from Austin to Dallas, if it even ran, would take longer than driving.
Pero el tren no resuelve todos los problemas.
But the train doesn't solve all the problems.
En Madrid y Barcelona, el problema de la vivienda sigue siendo muy serio aunque tenemos buenas conexiones.
In Madrid and Barcelona, the housing problem remains very serious even though we have good connections.
La demanda es enorme y la oferta no puede seguir el ritmo.
Demand is enormous and supply can't keep up.
Supply and demand.
People forget that this is at its core a supply problem.
You can fiddle with rent control, you can subsidize mortgages, you can do a dozen things on the demand side.
But if you're not actually building more units, you're just moving the pressure around.
Tienes razón, y por eso la ley americana es interesante.
You're right, and that's why the American law is interesting.
Si realmente ayuda a construir más casas y a simplificar los permisos, puede hacer una diferencia real.
If it really helps build more homes and simplifies permits, it can make a real difference.
Pero los efectos no se ven rápidamente.
But the effects aren't seen quickly.
Construir lleva tiempo.
Building takes time.
Years.
Sometimes a decade between a policy change and enough new units actually hitting the market to move prices.
That's the frustrating thing about housing policy.
The politicians who voted for it today won't be around when the results show up.
Y por eso los políticos prefieren medidas que dan resultados rápidos, aunque no resuelven el problema real.
And that's why politicians prefer measures that give quick results, even if they don't solve the real problem.
El control de alquileres es popular porque la gente lo ve inmediatamente.
Rent control is popular because people see it immediately.
Construir más pisos no es tan visible.
Building more apartments is not as visible.
Okay, before we wrap, I want to circle back to something you said a few minutes ago.
You used a word I want to ask you about.
You said the prices weren't 'asequibles' for young people.
Asequible.
I want to make sure I've got that right, because I feel like I've been reaching for it in family dinners and probably mangling it.
Sí, 'asequible' significa que algo tiene un precio que puedes pagar.
Yes, 'asequible' means something has a price you can pay.
Es como 'affordable' en inglés.
It's like 'affordable' in English.
Una casa asequible es una casa con un precio razonable para una persona normal.
An 'asequible' home is a home with a reasonable price for a normal person.
No es una casa barata, pero es una casa posible.
Not a cheap home, but a possible home.
Asequible.
Not cheap, not free, just within reach.
I like that distinction.
In English 'affordable' has gotten so politicized that it almost means different things depending on who's saying it.
'Asequible' feels cleaner somehow.
En español también tenemos el problema, Fletcher.
In Spanish we also have the problem, Fletcher.
Los políticos dicen 'vivienda asequible' constantemente y la gente ya no sabe qué significa exactamente.
Politicians say 'vivienda asequible' constantly and people no longer know exactly what it means.
Pero la palabra en sí es buena.
But the word itself is good.
Viene del verbo 'asir', que significa agarrar algo con la mano.
It comes from the verb 'asir', which means to grasp something with your hand.
Within grasp.
That's a beautiful etymology for a housing debate.
A home that's literally within reach.
Though for a lot of people right now, in Madrid and in Austin and everywhere in between, that's exactly what it isn't.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y si usas bien la palabra en la próxima cena familiar, esta vez por lo menos nadie va a pensar que estás embarazado.
And if you use the word correctly at the next family dinner, at least this time nobody is going to think you're pregnant.