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.
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.
Was watching the news right now. You are totally correct.
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?
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.
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.
Yep, reactive.
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I’ve given this quite a lot of thought.
- Limit ownership of housing to physical persons only, and even then up to 3 units (nationally).
- Create a program of divestment, without capital loss, for people and companies currently above the limit.
- Simplify planning permissions for new construction, and especially full building renovations.
- Abolish tax on buying/selling of real estate, compensate by increasing property tax.
- Abolish previous failed laws - like minimum affordable units per building, it just acts as an implicit tax on construction.
- Government should participate in construction in some capacity, but it shouldn’t be the main investor.
The goal of all this is to redirect capital from owning to construction. If you’re a capitalist who wants to do capitalist stuff you can still earn a profit, but produce a social benefit in the process.
Limit ownership of housing to physical persons only, and even then up to 3 units (nationally).
How would that work with apartment buildings? Seems it would disincentivize dense housing at a minimum. We’d want more dense housing to meet current demand
I, for one, prefer apartments. I jate having to maintain a whole house
Create a program of divestment, without capital loss, for people and companies currently above the limit
That could be an incredible amount of money. Housing is very speculative, and many people believe it is a bubble
Who would be responsible for bankrolling this?
Simplify planning permissions for new construction, and especially full building renovations.
A great idea. This is one of the major changes Japan made to go from “yhe land under the royal palace is worth more than all the real estate in California”, to being the incredibly cheap housing market it today
(The other major reform was a high inheritance tax on housing - forced a lot of people to sell their large, economically inefficient house, which was replaced by dense housing)
Abolish tax on buying/selling of real estate, compensate by increasing property tax.
I’m not as familiar with the economic implications here. My first concern would be that it then increases the short-term speculative pressure. People will be incentivized to flip properties quickly, which may incentivize the “landlord special” - quick, shoddy work to move the sell the home as quickly as possible, especially with the ownership limit
What would the benefits be?
Abolish previous failed laws - like minimum affordable units per building, it just acts as an implicit tax on construction.
A good choice
Government should participate in construction in some capacity, but it shouldn’t be the main investor.
I would need more information on how this would work and what itbmeans to form any opinion
How would that work with apartment buildings?
The same way it works right now. You own your apartment and share in the ownership of common spaces.
The question tells me you’re not from Spain. In other jurisdictions it might require modifying laws to allow for outright ownership of apartments, which complicates the issue somewhat. But it’s beneficial anyway, I can’t imagine not legally being able to own an apartment.
Who would be responsible for bankrolling this?
I was thinking government backed 0% loans to tenants who actually occupy an apartment. The amount fixed to the taxable value at the moment the law was passed. You would still keep paying the same amount as rent, but it would go toward paying off the loan. I admit it would take decades to complete.
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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.
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
100
Excellent news.
No doubt the struggle is not over but this is something to celebrate anyway 😁
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.
Real solutions take time to implement and produce results. If there’s a time limit, it’s because it’s not sustainable indefinitely, but it creates space to follow up with a long term solution. Now whether they think other policies they committed to are enough to create meaningful change or they have another strategy that hasn’t been announced yet, we don’t know yet.
I hope they found that poor lady somewhere to live.
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)
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.
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