“We will modify the housing law, we will eliminate stressed areas and interventionism and we will replace it with actions that promote an increase in the supply of housing.” It is one of the main recipes that the Popular Party has to solve the housing problem in Spain, which has become one of the main concerns for society. The declaration of stressed areas contemplated in the norm approved by Congress in the last legislature allows communities and city councils to establish rental price limits, but none of the eleven autonomous governments of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party have used this instrument.
The PP plans to register a bill on housing in the coming weeks, following its new strategy to give a supposed social turn to its policies. The party’s Deputy Secretary of Sustainable Development, Paloma Martín, held a press conference this Tuesday in which she outlined some of the measures that this package will include. In addition to the modification of the current state regulation, to eliminate these caps, the package contemplates improving the protection of landlords against “squatting and squatting” and increasing the supply of rental housing through tax incentives for owners.
“The housing problem has become the main problem and the culprit is Pedro Sánchez, who has been unable to carry out the land law, he has taken all possible steps in the wrong direction of market intervention that reduces the offer and intervene prices […] and it has shielded the squatters and the squatters,” the PP leader diagnosed.
The general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, already announced this Tuesday the main lines of these new proposals that her party is preparing: lower taxes, liberalize land and “eliminate bureaucracy” to build up to 200,000 homes a year. Today Martín has given some more details and has included two new elements. The aforementioned elimination of rent caps and the special protection of owners against squatting through a law that the PP approved in the Senate and whose processing is pending in Congress. The PP deputy has accused the president of the Lower House, Francina Armengol, of having this proposal “sequestered undemocratically in the drawer.”
End “interventionism”
The PP had previously criticized the caps on rental prices contemplated by the Law for the Right to Housing, which was first agreed upon within the Government by the PSOE and Unidas Podemos and which was finally approved by Congress in May of last year. But this Wednesday he promised to include in his new proposal a reversal of that measure that they describe as “interventionist” and to which they attribute a reduction in real estate supply by 15%. The PP also attributes the increase in prices by 13% in the last year to the implementation of this law.
But the truth is that although the approved law has a state character, the powers over housing are derived from the autonomous communities and city councils; What the text makes possible is for those regional and local governments to implement measures such as rent caps to try to contain prices. Barely a month after the law came into force, the PP took over the majority of these governments – it has eleven autonomies in its power – and in none of them are the limits allowed by the regulation being applied.
The only government that is applying the law is Catalonia. The Generalitat has declared stressed areas in 271 municipalities, including Barcelona and the main metropolitan cities, although there is still no official data on the variation in prices in recent months.
Increase supply
The PP maintains that one of the big problems is the drop in the supply of rental housing and that is why it has promised aid to landlords to reverse this supposed trend. Among these incentives, the PP offers “protection” to owners with its anti-occupation law but also with “fiscal” incentives to apartment owners. “We will help fiscally anyone who wants to rent their property,” he said.
Among these fiscal aid, Gamarra announced yesterday that they will include “the exemption from the donation tax” within families “of all those amounts that are intended for the acquisition of housing.” This Wednesday, Martín gave more details on this point. It will be a 100% bonus on the donation tax “to the most immediate family members.” “Normally it will be for children, young people, to purchase a home or to become independent by renting a home. And we understand that many times it is not appropriate to tax this donation,” he defended.
Although the PP points out the supply problems, the tenant unions point out, since the implementation of the law, another issue, seasonal rentals, a subterfuge that, they denounce, landlords are using to circumvent the price controls it imposes. the norm and that they already warned at the time that it could become a real hole. According to data collected by this newspaper, almost one in three apartments for rent is currently under this modality. Precisely the PP voted a few weeks ago against processing a law in Congress to regulate this point.
Protect owners
“What happened? “Many owners no longer rent their homes for fear of the insecurity caused by squatting,” says Martín to respond to the supposed problem of the supply of rental housing. “In Spain there are 80,000 occupied homes and it is not a small number, no matter how much the Government wants to minimize it. It is equivalent to cities like Toledo, Ceuta, Cáceres or Guadalajara being completely occupied,” denounced the PP deputy.
To this issue, they add a similar one, that of tenants who, they report, stop paying monthly rent. “Every year there are 25,000 squatters in Spain,” he said without citing any source. According to Funcas, the housing problem in Spain is due to speculation.
The PP therefore wants to include in its law some measures that are intended to protect people in a “vulnerable” situation. “They will have stable protection in the Civil Procedure Law, with the intervention of the regional and local administrations in matters of housing and social assistance so that they present an alternative proposal for decent housing for social rent and immediate attention measures. Possible financial aid and subsidies that the person who has stopped paying those rents in our plan may receive,” he defended.
Build protected housing
Feijóo’s party criticizes that Pedro Sánchez has not fulfilled his commitments regarding the construction of public housing and proposes activating the construction of “protected” housing. “The production of protected housing in Spain is at a minimum. 8,646 homes in 2023, 10% less than in 2022 and 18% less than in 202. The government has strangled the real estate market,” the deputy denounced at the press conference this Wednesday. However, when it came to landing a proposal, it did not go beyond a simple declaration of intent: “We will promote the construction of free and protected housing.”
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