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.