Fifteen years without a housing solution. Legal innovation and data science in housing policy

Abstract

Over the last 15 years, housing policies in Spain have been erratic. After having promoted a mortgage market with less and less guarantees (1992-2007), and after an initial post-crisis phase in which no measures to solve the housing crisis were taken (2007-2010), national and regional legislators, both influenced by social movements and part of the judiciary, passed several law and policies that did not help to mitigate this crisis, but even worsened it. This paper systematizes the private law legislation adopted in the last fifteen years in the field of housing, analyzing whether better regulation principles have been followed. It subsequently studies the role that legal research should take in order to improve housing policies and how can data science provide an honest, objective and complete approach of the Social Sciences, thus promoting evidence-based policies.