Simon Hunter
SPAIN’S Socialist Party Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met with representatives from the housing sector on Thursday, and pledged that his government would work to address Spain’s chronic lack of affordable public housing.
Accompanying Sanchez at the meeting was Housing Minister Isabel Rodriguez, as well as representatives from Seopan, Spain’s association of major construction companies, the CGATE architects association, labour unions CCOO and UGT, and campaigning associations such as ProVivienda, among others.
After the meeting, Rodriguez said that the Socialist-led government would seek to amend legislation to facilitate the financing of new housing projects, as well as encouraging property owners to put more affordable housing on the market, so that no more than 30% of family income is spent on housing.
“We need them,” Rodriguez said about these landlords, in comments reported by news agency EFE, given that 95% of rental accommodation is in the hands of private owners.
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Rodriguez also reported that all present at the meeting ‘agreed with the objective of increasing supply to guarantee the right to an affordable place to live’.
“We are all united over this common objective and we have left with the commitment to strengthen public-private collaboration to increase the public pool of housing […],” she added.
The main opposition Partido Popular (PP), however, was quick to slam the initiatives from the Socialists, who are governing in coalition with leftist alliance Sumar.
“Today, six years after having arrived in La Moncloa [prime ministerial palace], he is starting to show concern for a problem that is asphyxiating many Spaniards: housing,” said PP spokesperson Cuca Gamarra. “Obviously what this shows is that for six years he has not done a single thing.”
Gamarra went on to accuse Sanchez of raising the issue whenever an election was looming.
“Every time there is an election campaign, he makes an announcement about a number of homes that no one ends up seeing,” she claimed, in reference to upcoming polls in both the Catalunya and Pais Vasco regions.
She also said that Spain was suffering an ‘absence of government’, because ‘faced with real problems, the government is doing other things’.
Meanwhile, ahead of the meeting on Thursday, the Tenants Unions in Madrid and Catalunya issued a joint statement drawing attention to the issues they claim are facing the Spanish housing market.
“The housing problem is not technical, it is political: it is about deciding once and for all whether the government wants housing to be a right or whether it wants it to continue to create massive profits for a few,” the unions said.
“What is the point of building more housing in the midst of a global resource crisis when there are millions of empty homes in Spain?,” they continued. “We demand the lowering of rents by law, an end to fraud in seasonal rentals and room rentals.”
