Spain’s cabinet ministers said they have an agreement on new measures to curb the housing crisis in the country after the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen last week from her apartment sparked protests.
Spain’s coalition government on Tuesday said it has agreed new measures to tackle the country’s housing crisis after the forceful removal of an 87-year-old pensioner last week from her apartment in Madrid sparked nationwide solidarity protests.
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said the housing legislation includes a ban on evictions until 2030, tighter rules for short-term rentals and a two-year extension for existing leases.
“It’s time to intervene in the speculative housing market and begin to rebalance the scales between citizens and vulture funds,” Garcia, who belongs to the leftist government’s junior coalition partner Sumar, wrote in a post on X.
Making it so people cannot be evicted when they don’t pay anything just means that the only people that can afford to rent property will be massive funds that can hedge. We need to have rental properties, and we need them to be owned by private persons, not giant multinational companies with no soul.
This also only creates more incentive to go for holiday rentals, or even empty houses.
The problem isn’t eviction, it’s sudden spikes in rent. And lack of social funds to house people that cannot afford rent.
If they want to freeze evictions, surely they should foot the bill for unpaid rent? (Effectively delivering social housing).
I am all for a socialist system, but having a capitalist system and just fucking over the balance of power in a transaction limits the actors only to those who already have an exceedance of power in the market, without actually really reducing their power. Giant corporations will just continue buying up more and more properties, and raising rents to compensate for those that don’t pay, averaged across their portfolio.
Excellent news.
No doubt the struggle is not over but this is something to celebrate anyway 😁
They want owners to lose their houses in mass so the government will subsidy and own the houses, then you will lay rent to the government.
Own nothing and be happy. We are back to feudal times.
This is such a stupid take on so many levels, I can’t even tell if it’s irony.
This is such a stupid take on so many levels, I can’t even tell if it’s irony.
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said the housing legislation includes a ban on evictions until 2030
If like now details on this, because that seems like bad policy. What’s to stop people just squatting for the next 3 years?
It seems vad policy, but if it’s good policy, why time limit it? None of these measures are addressomg the long-term issue. Spain needs more housing. How are they building more housing?
Spain doesn’t really need more housing. Spain has a ton of housing. But most of the housing (especially in cities) belongs to landlords, banks and vulture funds, who rent it at high prices and evict people when they want.
Spain doesn’t have a housing problem, it has a renting problem.
And AirBnB and the likes have made it even worse.
I hope they found that poor lady somewhere to live.
Now increase taxes massively on empty homes. So the renters that don’t wanna rent out of fear they can’t evict the next tenant just sell the house instead and we can have houses for a reasonable price.
gov will not solve a problem it caused or facilitated. these unionists want the right to a house (not the right to owning a house) and they may actually get what they ask for (gov renting big comunes to private corporations, which will own everything and be the only ones who can afford the exorbitant housing taxes to also pay for their worthless UBI, very ironically)
Firstly, “until 2030.” Stay on it, my Spanish comrades.
Secondly, imagine what loss-adverse USians could achieve, if they bothered to notice they’re losing, anyway.
US has societal learned helplessness
Again with the same approach of symbolic half-assed measures that don’t address anything.
Extending leases and banning evictions for 2 years will not reduce prices, or create more housing. It will only delay bad PR of evicting old ladies until the next election is over.
It will lower prices a bit short term but will make things worst long term. Similar laws were already implemented in Catalonia and Pais Vasco and it lowered the number of apartments available for rent in those places.
At the same time this is what the left demanded. Sanchez failed to address the issue properly over the years* and now all he can do are some short term, reactionary measures to appease the protesters. He will lose next elections and PP will do even less do fix things. Over the next decade or two things will only get worse. The right solution is of course to build more public housing, more protected housing, promote coops and turn housing into a right, not an investment.
*Understandably, he was fighting for survival most of his term and the coalitions was incredibly weak. It was clear to me this will happen from the moment I saw the first election polls. The left, as always, is too fragmented to govern properly.
and it lowered the number of apartments available for rent in those places.
isn’t that the goal? are those formerly rented apartments now in the possession of its resident?
reactionary measures
I think you mean reactive measures. Reactionary is a political term that describes someone who opposes progressive change and wants a return to the old ways. Reactive is a more general term for responding to something after it happens, rather then acting before it happens.
These measures seem progressive, albeit in a small way, so they aren’t reactionary; but they are reactive.
On the other hand you have trump who does stuff like kidnapping maduro, which is reactionary as it harkens back to an older American imperialism; but it’s not reactive as nothing really prompted it.
Also mentioned was a significant tightening of the short term rental market.
But what are the rules being tightened? The details are important. Does it actually improve anything, or does it just make short-term rentals complicated for any new competitors, making the existing large players very wealthy since they’ll no longer have to compete?
Was watching the news right now. You are totally correct.
