“Houses are for living in, not for speculating”
AN AGREEMENT that will enable the government to pass ‘the first law giving a right to housing of our democracy’ was reached on Friday, announced PM Pedro Sánchez.
His Socialist (PSOE)-Unidas Podemos coalition has ensured parliamentary support for the bill, which will come from Catalan left-wingers ERC and Basque country separatists EH Bildu. Access to housing is enshrined in the Spanish constitution and Sr Sánchez assured the law will make this ‘a right and not a problem’.
“This law is going to transform an enormous problem, especially for young people in this country,” he said.
It has taken 14 months of negotiations since the draft version was first presented to guarantee that it will be approved.
While Unidas Podemos had prioritised their negotiations with the PSOE on rent caps and protection from evictions, the pro-independence parties had wanted to ensure the law did not step on powers assigned to regional governments.
Minister for social affairs and secretary general of Podemos, Ione Belarra claimed the law represents ‘a win for the people, and a loss for the banks, vulture funds and speculators’.
“For decades they have been playing Monopoly with our people’s rents and mortgages, for which reason this law is to remind them loud and clear that houses are for living in not for speculating,” she said.
Other measures will increase the stock of public housing available to rent and will mean tenants no longer have to pay estate agencies.
EH Bildu parliamentary spokeswoman Merxe Aizpurus admitted the law ‘will not solve everything’, but will ‘relieve’ the situation of many families and ‘close the door to speculators and vulture funds’.
She noted that the legislation caps rents and prohibits evictions in cases where there is no alternative housing. The rent cap will apply in so-called ‘tensioned’ areas of city centres, and will vary according to whether the owners have many properties.
Opposition Partido Popular (PP) leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo claimed it was ‘shameful’ that the law does not even mention squatting, which is happening almost 50 times a day in Spain. Nevertheless, there are more than twice as many evictions per day in Spain.
Sr Feijóo assured that building more housing is the only way to bring down prices – although this did not hold true during the property boom in 2007 when record numbers of homes were being built but prices were still rising.
An alternative model presented by the PP claims to protect those who have difficulties paying for housing, and help young people to access housing with bank guarantees.
The agreements reached on the housing law include maintaining the cap on rent increases of 2% for this year, and increasing to 3% in 2024, after which a new index will be created to regulate future increases, which will be ‘more stable and less than the consumer price index’ which is currently used.
Evictions will also be prohibited if they do not have a fixed date and time, and there will be new possibilities to extend eviction procedures to over two years.
The property rental sector has argued the law will worsen the situation and generate instability in the market, forcing prices up for new tenants, because the ‘real problem’ is the lack of supply and measures like the rent cap could reduce this even more. Meanwhile the tenants’ union, which fights against abuses by investment funds in the housing market, claimed the law has ‘holes’ which will enable price rises and potential frauds for seasonal contracts; and the association for people affected by mortgages (PAH) claimed it does not go far enough to prevent evictions of vulnerable people. The government aims to definitively approve the housing law in May.