In Podemos, the announcements on housing by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, in the last rallies of the electoral campaign are not sitting well. This Saturday, the socialist leader announced that the Government is going to approve a policy to grant guarantees of up to 20% for the purchase of a first home for young people and families with dependent minors. “It is a measure by Ana Patricia Botín, who has also raised the PP and that Vox likes,” the party spokesman Pablo Fernández summarized this Monday.
Pedro Sánchez announces another 20,000 public homes on Ministry of Defense land
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The party believes that this policy is regressive and also warns of the dangers that excessive family indebtedness can cause in the economy thanks to public policies. On Sunday, the leader of the formation and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, warned in a message on networks of this danger: “Fostering the mortgage spiral is going to lead families to get into debt.” This Monday, at a press conference, the Podemos spokesman went a little further and warned that policies like these could lead to a real estate bubble like the ones Spain had to face in the recent past.
“Measures like this are the ones that caused a real estate bubble with catastrophic results that we know of,” said Fernández, who has stated that when Podemos does not lead in housing matters “the PSOE proposals end up being contrary to the general interest.” “The PSOE proposes a measure to finance the entry of the mortgage that Botín and the PP have already made, and which failed in the United Kingdom. As long as it does not depend on Podemos, the PSOE housing proposals are contrary to the general interest. The entire housing law must be enforced”, Belarra reinforced with another message on social networks this morning.
The PSOE proposes a measure to finance the entry of the mortgage that Botín and the PP have already made, and which failed in the United Kingdom. As long as it does not depend on Podemos, the PSOE housing proposals are contrary to the general interest. All housing law must be enforced.
—Ione Belarra (@ionebelarra) May 8, 2023
After the approval of the housing law in Congress, with the agreement of the government parties and their usual partners ERC and EH Bildu, the PSOE has taken advantage of the president’s political acts and also his interventions in parliamentary headquarters, in the midst of the pre-campaign for the regional and municipal authorities on May 28, to announce different housing measures, such as the mobilization of 50,000 Sareb flats and the creation of another 43,000 on Defense land for affordable rent.
Already then, Podemos recalled that the most important thing now in terms of housing is that the law that is about to be definitively approved is fully complied with, once the process is approved in the Senate. “We have been claiming the obvious for a long time, that all Sareb homes must be available to the communities’ public rental housing stock. I wish we would move faster, but this is the way to revalidate the trust of citizens in the Government, ”said the general secretary of Podemos at the time.
But Belarra’s party also insists on the policies that it has also proposed to its coalition partner for months, such as the cap on variable mortgages. “The rise in rates has triggered the interest margin of entities by 28%,” Fernández said this Monday. “We believe that it is possible to increase the bank tax. We propose doubling it so that it goes from 4.8 to 9.6%. It would allow greater income to undertake public policies ”, he added.
