2023-04-17 21:35:28
The Francoist slogan ‘Spain is different’ is well known. It was coined in the 1960s to mark a cultural difference and a tourist attraction. ‘Spain is different’ also meant that Spain was outside the European consensus. Something that has happened exactly in The housing system: a Francoist model prepared by the Prime Minister of Housing, José Luis Arrese. Model that moved away from Europe, focused on the promotion of property at the expense of rentleaving a tiny social housing stock, an unregulated housing market and excessive land development.
I think it is important to start with the main thesis of this article: Arrese is dead! We are facing a historical paradigm shift. Democracy’s first housing law is the final death stamp on a failed policy that has lasted too long. With this law we begin a new course that will have to be developed. We are moving towards a housing model that prioritizes housing as a right. A model that will develop the housing system as the fifth pillar of the welfare state.
But here we go with the second thesis of the article: the housing law is only a starting point. The housing system is not changed only through the ‘Official State Gazette’. This law lays the foundations for a new model that has to emerge. A system that has to deploy the three major instruments of a European-style housing policy: increase in the protected housing stock, increase in rental aid and rent regulation. Three instruments that must necessarily operate at the same time do not work in isolation.
Increasing the social park is the great key to moderate prices and offer affordable alternatives to the entire population, but this requires decades, a lot of investment and broad consensus. In the meantime, rental aid serves to avoid housing emergencies, while rent control protects and provides stability to tenants while moderating uncontrolled price increases. That is the European housing consensus. In this, the housing law sets course for Europe.
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We come to the last thesis of the article: the text has greatly improved compared to the first draft, but there are still improvements to be made. Price regulation in stressed areas. Indefinite classification of protected land. Large holders are already individuals and legal entities with five or more homes. There is greater protection for vulnerable families against evictions. Tenants are empowered by having real estate management expenses go to the landlord. While the limits to the rises by CPI continue to be controlled and are replaced by a better indicator. The law, however, has some important holes that must be resolved in the parliamentary process. The main one: the regulation of seasonal rentals.
The law is not perfect. But no law in a democracy is by nature perfect because it is the result of negotiation and the agreement of many interests. And this law has cost a lot. It has taken the real estate crisis, rent inflation and the covid crisis to pass. The permanent intervention of housing movements has been necessary, PAH, Tenants Unionetc., and the new enlightened parties of that same movement, United We Can. Although particularly for the insistence of the mayoress of Barcelona, the first public figure who, since 2015, has been demanding this law. This is one victory of the housing movement. The law is not perfect and needs to be improved. But today it’s time to celebrate: Spain is no longer ‘different’ in the field of housing. Welcome to Europe.
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