Housing, ethics, and the uncomfortable moment when our principles cost us money

“Basic ethical and moral values are —or should be— independent of our own self-interest.”

I have been thinking about this sentence for a few days.

It is easy to say. The difficult part is finding out whether we still believe it when those values collide directly with our own wallet.

And few issues seem more appropriate for that exercise today than access to housing.

We can talk about prices, supply, demand, regulation, speculation, legal certainty, public housing, short-term rentals, interest rates, wages or investment. And we should.

But there is another, far more uncomfortable conversation we may be avoiding:

Do we think the same way about housing when we are looking for a home for our children as we do when we are the ones with a property to sell or rent out?

That is where this reflection begins.

Housing has a rather uncomfortable characteristic

A home can be many things at the same time.

It is a place to live. It is wealth. It is an investment. It is savings accumulated over decades. It may be an inheritance, a source of income or financial security in retirement.

And at the same time, it is something as basic as the place where another person builds their life.

That dual nature explains much of the conflict. For someone who buys property as an investment, an increase in its value is usually good news. For someone trying to buy their first home, exactly the same increase may push it further out of reach.

The same number. Two completely different perspectives. Both understandable.

The problem begins when our principles change depending on which side of the transaction we happen to be on.

Let’s try a small thought experiment

Imagine our daughter is in her twenties. She has finished studying, she works, earns a reasonable salary and wants to move out.

She looks for a flat. She does the maths. It does not add up.

As parents, we would probably think something is wrong. That it cannot be normal for someone who works to be unable to access decent housing. That rents are too high. That buying requires an enormous amount of savings upfront. That our children face difficulties we perhaps did not face to the same extent.

Now change just one variable.

We own a flat that we want to rent out. We receive several offers and discover that we can get €1,100 a month instead of €900.

What do we do?

Or we want to sell it and an estate agent tells us the market would allow us to ask €40,000 more than we initially expected.

What do we do?

I am not trying to answer for anyone. That is precisely the question.

Because this is where ethics stops being theoretical.

Principles are easy when they are free

We tend to consider ourselves supportive, fair or responsible because we defend certain principles. But defending a principle when it carries no personal cost is relatively easy.

The interesting test comes when acting according to that principle means giving something up: money, comfort, returns, an opportunity or a privilege.

I am not saying that a property owner should give their home away, or that earning a return is immoral. Nor am I saying that all landlords are speculators, or that every difficulty in accessing housing can be attributed to individual decisions.

That would be an absurd simplification of an extraordinarily complex problem.

I am asking something different: if we believe access to housing is a collective problem, to what extent are we individually willing to accept some consequence of the principles we claim to support?

The numbers help explain why this conversation matters

This is not merely a perception. Recent Bank of Spain data show that rental costs place a particularly heavy burden on lower-income households and younger people, and that the problem is especially intense in major urban areas such as Barcelona.

The Spanish Youth Council’s Emancipation Observatory, published in 2026, put Spain’s youth emancipation rate at 14.5%, the lowest in its historical series, with an estimated emancipation age of 30.2 years.

These indicators need to be read carefully: comparing the median rent for an entire home with the median salary of a young person does not mean that every young person literally spends that percentage of their income on rent. But it does illustrate how difficult it can be to access a home independently.

Barcelona is a useful laboratory for this contradiction

Those of us who live around Barcelona see it at close range. Municipal data continue to show high rents, while Catalan government statistics show changes in the prices of new contracts since rent-containment measures were introduced in areas officially classified as stressed housing markets.

That alone does not mean the problem has been solved. To understand what is happening, we need to look simultaneously at prices, dwelling size, the number of contracts, available supply, temporary rentals and other variables.

It is a good example of why we should be suspicious of explanations that are too simple.

I don’t think there is a single culprit

There is a common temptation: find the villain.

The landlord. The tenant. Investment funds. Tourist apartments. Estate agents. Politicians. Foreign buyers. Large property owners. Regulation. Lack of regulation.

We can probably find objectionable examples in many places. But the structural problem is much more complex.

The Bank of Spain has pointed, among other factors, to growing demand, its geographical concentration, limited supply in certain areas and the relatively small social-rental sector.

And there is another issue that cannot be solved quickly: housing cannot be produced overnight.

Regulation does not remove the moral dilemma either

There are legitimate disagreements over specific housing policies. Supporters of rent caps argue that they can restrain prices and protect households in particularly pressured markets. Critics warn about possible effects on available supply, investment or shifts toward other forms of rental.

That is why I do not think a discussion about ethics should automatically become a discussion about one particular law.

My reflection comes before politics. It is personal.

How far does our individual responsibility go?

Suppose I own a flat and can legally rent it for €1,200.

Am I morally obliged to rent it for €900? I do not have a universal answer.

What about €1,100? What if the tenant has lived there for ten years? What if the €300 difference matters to my retirement income? What if I own three homes? Or twenty? What if the prospective tenant is a family with two children? What if the person who needs help is my own daughter?

At some point, a boundary appears.

And I suspect that the boundary moves quite a lot depending on whether we are the ones gaining or losing money from the decision.

The point is not to determine the correct price. It is to ask whether we use the same moral standard when our position changes.

The bias we all carry with us

We are remarkably good at justifying whatever benefits us.

There is probably some truth in all four statements.

And that is precisely what makes the problem interesting. Ethics is rarely about choosing between something obviously good and something obviously bad. Often it means choosing between two legitimate interests that come into conflict.

Perhaps we should reverse the question

Instead of asking “Do I have the right to do this?”, we could add a second question:

“Even if I have the right to do it, do I believe it is the right thing to do?”

They are not the same thing.

The law sets minimum boundaries for coexistence. Ethics often begins just beyond them.

The mirror test

There is a thought experiment I try to apply to many issues, and it is especially useful here:

Would I defend exactly the same rule if I did not know what position I was going to occupy?

If I did not know whether I would be a landlord or a tenant. If I did not know whether I would inherit three properties or none. If I did not know whether my children would be able to buy a home. If I did not know how much money I would earn. If I did not know which side of the table I would sit on.

What system would I consider fair?

The question echoes John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance”: thinking about the rules of society without knowing in advance which position we will occupy within it.

It does not solve the problem. But it removes one very dangerous variable: our own self-interest.

And that brings me back to the opening sentence

Perhaps I should add something.

Values are not demonstrated when they align with our interests. They are demonstrated when they conflict with them.

It is very easy to defend solidarity when somebody else pays. It is easy to demand restraint when we are buyers. It is easy to defend the market when we are sellers. It is easy to demand collective sacrifices when the sacrifice never falls on us.

Housing simply makes that contradiction visible in a particularly stark way.

Because behind every percentage point of return there is wealth, savings and financial security. But on the other side there is someone trying to build a home.

And a reasonably fair society probably needs to be capable of recognising both things at the same time.

I do not have a simple solution to the housing problem. I am rather suspicious of anyone who says they do.

But I do have a question that I think is worth asking ourselves:

If our interests switched sides tomorrow, would we still defend exactly the same principles?

If the answer is yes, perhaps we really are talking about values.

If the answer is no, perhaps we are simply talking about interests.

And they are not the same thing.