The PP is tied to the discourse of the extreme right also on housing, despite its attempt at a “social” turn. Squatting is one of the main obsessions of Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party, to which they have now added a new concept, “inquiokupación”, to define those people who stop paying their landlords. However, the popular ones have included in their package of measures on housing one to limit the protection against evictions that the law contemplates: that the threshold for considering a family in a vulnerable situation goes from 1,800 euros per month to 1,050.
This Wednesday the PP presented some of the main measures that it plans to introduce in a future bill on housing. This is the second rule announced by the formation after its change in strategy to present Feijóo as a more moderate political leader, concerned about social issues. Among the policies that this initiative foresees is the end of the cap on rental prices or tax reductions for owners to encourage them to put their apartments on the rental market.
But while rental prices are skyrocketing in all cities in Spain, a large part of the measures announced within that plan are aimed at the supposed problem of squatting. “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,” said this Wednesday the deputy secretary of Sustainable Development of the PP, Paloma Martín, at the press conference to present the content of the initiative.
This calculation comes from a study by the private foundation Institut Cerdá that also speaks of a decrease in these squats by 10%. Data from the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) number 16,765 known acts of burglary and usurpation of real estate, out of a total stock of 20.9 million homes, 0.06% of the total. The PP deputy also gave another piece of information for which she did not provide sources: “But what is more serious is that every year 25,000 ‘restoculations’ occur in Spain. It is a problem that experts already warn is becoming chronic.”
To avoid this last phenomenon, the PP is going to include in its bill, which it will present in Congress in the coming weeks, a limitation on the protection of vulnerable families against evictions, something that Martín defended in the press conference as a measure to improve young people’s “access” to rental housing.
The measure focuses on dismantling one of the points of the housing law that Congress approved during the last legislature, the departure of the PSOE and Unidas Podemos Government. This rule included mediation and arbitration mechanisms to protect vulnerable families who cannot afford the rent, in order to prevent them from being evicted. Specifically, the law seeks, through a modification of the Civil Procedure Law, to give administrations enough time to find a housing solution for vulnerable people, without limiting or eliminating the rights of the owners. In this way, it would respond to the requests of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which on several occasions has reprimanded Spain for violating the right to housing.
The law considers that a family can benefit from this right of mediation when the amount of rent and supplies exceeds 30% of the total income and as long as the income level does not exceed the limit of three times the Public Indicator of Monthly Multiple Effects Income (IPREM), currently at 600 euros. That is, as long as the combined income of all family members does not exceed 1,800 euros per month.
This limit increases depending on the number of dependent children, in cases where it is a single-parent family or with dependent or disabled children.
And this is the barometer that the PP wants to touch to prevent many owners from stopping renting their homes “for fear of squatting.” The new limit, according to the law that the conservative party will soon present, will be 1.5 times the IPREM. That is, for a family to be able to benefit from this mediation, the total income of the entire unit could not exceed 1,050 euros. It is enough for a couple to have one member without a job and another earning the minimum wage to be outside this protection.
“From the Popular Party we face this problem that the Government has put us in. We are a responsible party, totally committed to the most vulnerable, to those who truly are, and we are going to protect them with all our strength,” Martín claimed this measure that he tried to mix with the supposed requirements that young people are asked to rent. , which is not established by law but by the market and which are usually much superior.
This point of the law was already the subject of criticism for these same reasons during its processing in Congress, when the right considered that the text left Spain as a paradise for squatting. Already then, tenant unions criticized this same measure for being precisely insufficient in its protection of tenants.
According to the latest statistics from the CGPJ, the measures taken after the pandemic to prevent the evictions of vulnerable people reduced the launches. Even so, in 2023, for example, almost 20,000 families were left on the streets due to non-compliance with the Urban Leases Law and another 5,260 due to not being able to pay the mortgage.
The protection of the housing law, furthermore, does not even affect all leases, only those considered large holders, that is, those who own more than ten homes. For these cases, the rule contemplates a mechanism so that when there are vulnerable people, the administration is aware and tries to prevent the eviction from moving forward.
The mediating body will be the autonomous community where the property is located, to try to reach an agreement between the parties and, if this is not possible, for the administration to provide a housing solution to the vulnerable person or family before filing the lawsuit. The autonomous communities have funds provided by the State through the State Housing Plan and specifically intended to cover these types of situations.
The Platform for People Affected by Mortgage (PAH) was already very critical at the time of a measure that it considered a “make-up.” “The conceptual framework of the law involves postponing them, suspending them while social services look for an alternative. And that’s a trap. We know that social services are not always transferred, which, on the other hand, are collapsed. Furthermore, there is no alternative, because there are no houses,” Laura Barrio explained to elDiario.es last year, when the law was being negotiated between the Government and the parliamentary groups.
The PP tried to justify this Wednesday that this change in the criteria should be accompanied by greater protection for vulnerable families, so that it does not fall on “the owners but is the responsibility of social services.” However, in the absence of knowing more details of those provided by Martín, this protection involves incorporating “the regional and local administrations in matters of housing and social assistance so that they present an alternative proposal for decent housing for rent”, something that is already contemplated the current wording of the law.
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