The 2008 crisis led to the emergence of a serious housing problem that had been lurking for some time and erupted in public in the form of an increasing and unbearable number of housing problems. evacuations. The most common housing solution in our country has been home ownership, which the crisis has made unaffordable for new generations who have to resort to renting. However, this change in habits was not the solution, as the price of the offer reached unattainable extremes when there was huge demand for rental housing.
Article 47 of the 1978 Constitution protects this social right: “All Spaniards have the right to decent and adequate housing”. And to make this right possible, it orders public intervention: “public powers will regulate the use of land in the general interest to prevent speculation, encourage the conditions necessary to make this right effective, and establish the relevant norms.” Little or nothing has been done since the goodwill declaration to resolve the current drama, which was summarized by the data a few days ago: “According to Eurostat, 41% of households dedicate more than 40% of their net income to paying rent. more 38,000 evacuations, at a rate of 105 per day. Most affected are young people who are unable to emancipate themselves and families with fewer resources and eventually fall into the poverty trap: If they do not have enough income or cannot get a contract because they have no payroll, they fall into the poverty trap. paying a disproportionate price to black for a room to be rented out”. A sad fate for a confused teenager looking for a place to stay in life.
A study of the European Parliament’s housing policy divides club countries into four groups: the first group, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, has the largest social housing sectors in the EU, thanks to heavy government intervention. 3% of GDP comes to be applied to housing policy. At the bottom and fourth tiers, Portugal, Spain and Greece have large home ownership sectors, minimal social rental housing and low quality and declining private rental sectors. In these latter countries, the private sector has become a haven for national or foreign speculative investment that generates unaffordable and discriminatory free prices.
What can be done to repair this painful condition? This housing law The project, which the new government continues to discuss internally, envisages various appropriate measures such as preventing the privatization of social housing, allocating 30% of all urban developments to subsidized housing, imposing new limits on evictions, declaring areas under pressure for a limited time. lien to force vacant houses to enter the rental or sale cycle, where the rental price will be controlled. Admittedly, there is much stricter regulation for tourist apartments, which clearly participates in the rise in the cost of rental housing.
Such well-calibrated measures may be effective as a whole, but will not solve the problem in the medium to long term. To achieve this, two concrete and undoubtedly controversial actions are required: first, the creation of a public and cumulative social rental housing park. It has already been said that the most active countries in the EU allocate 3% of their GDP for this purpose.
The latter is more complex and ideological and consists of: withdrawal of housing from the speculative market. It makes no sense for the saver to go into the housing market in search of juicy interests, rather than dedicating his money to productive activities on the Stock Exchange or taking on them himself (or allocating them to other real estate transactions, such as a business or business). office buildings). This goal can be achieved by financial means without affecting property rights.
The bill doesn’t go that far. So how incomprehensible it is that the left is still divided over the scope of its very modest reform.