Housing policy is once again a source of head-on clash between the coalition partners. With the Law for the Right to Housing stalled due to the lack of agreement and support in Congress, the PSOE has carried out a parliamentary maneuver in the opposite direction to the spirit of that text already agreed by the Council of Ministers. The socialist group registered a few days ago two amendments to two laws that have nothing to do with the agreed draft but that in practice will mean that express evictions can be carried out in cases of trespassing or usurpation. An initiative that they have carried out in the middle of the negotiations to unclog the law and without prior communication with their partners.
The escalation of rents and mortgages accentuates the tension between the partners of the Government for the Housing Law
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“It is about that, in case of raid and illegal occupation, the judge gives a period of 48 hours after the complaint for them to be evicted. This greatly speeds up the procedures for these issues and responds to a concern that many mayors of occupations of many homes were raising, ”said the socialist spokesman, Patxi López, this Wednesday in Congress.
Asked about the spirit of the housing law that contemplated protecting all vulnerable people before being evicted regardless of whether the case had to do with non-payment or occupation, López defended that “when the housing law is approved, we will seek housing solutions for these people”, although in any case he stressed that it is about “also defending the right of people to have a home”. That amendment has been registered by the PSOE to the law of criminal procedure, something that the spokesman himself has justified because “we have seen that this law fit us to be able to do it as soon as possible.”
The movement has taken United We Can by surprise, for whom housing policy is strategic. The purple ones believe that their coalition partners buy the discourse on occupations from the right and the extreme right, and they are alarmed because the main party of the Executive is now focusing on a situation that they consider residual and not on the increase in the price of rents and mortgages.
“I see Patxi López off center and he has to remember that he is not governing with Mayor Oreja,” the deputy of United We Can, Rafa Mayoral, also came out to answer in Congress. For Mayoral it is a risk “to assume the agenda of the right, because that is how the right wins”, and he warns that people are waiting for a different response to their problems. “It is very important that you realize that people have problems with the abusive increases in rent and with the increase in mortgage payments. It doesn’t make sense that when we are negotiating the housing law they come out with this that is out of place. Let them focus and think about the parliamentary majority that is supporting the Government”, the Podemos deputy asked Patxi López.
The PSOE amendments
In the text registered by the PSOE to expedite evictions, it is detailed that “in processes related to home invasions or usurpation of real estate or a real estate right belonging to another, the Judge or Court may agree on the reasoned eviction within the term maximum of 48 hours from the request at the request of a legitimate party or from the referral of the police report, without the need for the provision of a bond, if the occupants of the property do not exhibit within that period the legal title that legitimizes the permanence in the property.
Regarding the possibility of leaving vulnerable people on the street, that same text leaves the final decision in the hands of the judge and social services, stating that if “the existence of people at risk of social exclusion or special vulnerability or a situation of risk or possible abandonment of a minor, the Judge or Court will immediately notify the competent local or regional public entity in matters of social services and protection of minors as well as the Public Prosecutor, so that they can adopt the protection measures that are necessary.
In another different amendment, in this case to the Organizational Efficiency Law, the PSOE also proposes that it is no longer necessary that the search cases be judged by a popular court but that a judge be the one who can take charge, thus streamlining the court proceedings. Throughout the legislature, the opposition has repeatedly accused the Government of permissiveness with regard to illegal occupations, even accusing the Executive of protecting them in the Housing Law for specifying that, in case of vulnerability, no one can be evicted or evicted from a property until not having a guaranteed housing solution regardless of the legal situation in which they find themselves. With this movement, and a few months before the regional and municipal elections, the PSOE says it is responding to an express request from mayors and city councils.
