“Not even homeless people, nor houses without people”
Getting your own roof is becoming more and more unattainable. Housing is a right to be guaranteed. The housing crisis is unsustainable and requires both immediate and in-depth measures, starting by supporting the ongoing popular mobilizations.
Last weekend the streets of the main cities of the Spanish State were filled with protesters with signs and chants expressing “housing is a right, not a business”. The housing crisis is a serious problem that has reached an almost unsustainable limit for entire families..
A Spanish citizen spends on average one 43% from your salary to the payment of rent for a home, when according to some specialists who even make a large estimate, This figure should not exceed 30%. To understand this situation we must take into account that last month the price per square meter has risen to 13 € (a 80% more than in 2014, when it barely exceeded €7/m2). In fact, in August 2023, the barrier of 12 €/m2 and, far from reducing, has increased during the last year.
Access to housing for younger people (whose salaries lag behind rents) it has become impossible, which pushes a huge percentage of the population to share a flat. The situation worsens in the main capitals of the State, where the price of a mini apartment is equivalent to 108% of a young person's salary. And it is that, in Spain, 2 decade 3 young people from among 18 a 34 years they live with their parents, since in this age group their income grows at the rate of inflation, but the rent increase has no type of limit, no roof.
Given this situation that worsens year after year, The “progressive” PSOE government sanctioned in May 2023 the law for the right to housing, that establishes limits on the rental price, The creation of a map of stressed areas that sets a minimum and maximum indicative cost for the rental price protects vulnerable families against evictions and offers bonuses for those owners who have empty homes to mobilize them.. It is an insufficient law, that does not look for real solutions, since implementation is then in the hands of each CCAA. Until now, only Catalonia has put it into force with an uncertain result; According to the Generalitat, prices fell by 5% in the second quarter of 2024 (the first complete in application), but the number of contracts decreased by 17%.
After the massive demonstrations, the central government has allocated a larger budget to rental aid for young people (young bonus) and have accelerated the resolution of many grants that were already requested. While his partners in the SUMAR government have wanted to distance themselves, claiming that “It is crucial to deploy other types of measures to address the housing problem.”, such as forcing the autonomies to apply rental price control or conditioning the state funds they receive from the Government to establish said measure.”
Given the sustained crisis to reach our own roof, forceful measures are required to: guarantee the obtaining of housing for workers and the people, with special plans for young people. Set a minimum percentage of the salary for the monthly payment, without leonine conditions of accessibility. Set maximum values without increases and prohibit evictions. Guarantee the immediate accommodation of the most vulnerable people who are forced to live on the streets. Severely punish the use of housing as a speculative capitalist business and expropriate the properties of large holders who refuse to adopt progressive social measures..
With everything, They are transitional measures that require deeper ones., to achieve your own roof, such as the implementation of a massive construction plan for popular housing, financed by the state, to reduce the housing deficit, improve the living conditions of working families and not submit to the ordeal of bank mortgages. Housing must be a right, not a business. To make it count, it is necessary to support the struggles of tenant associations., the ongoing mobilizations and fight for a different system, that can only be socialism.
