Spain: can the government solve the housing crisis?
The eviction of an 87-year-old tenant in Madrid has sparked massive protests across Spain. The government has now passed two decrees providing stronger protection for tenants, including a ban on evictions of particularly vulnerable people until 2030. The Spanish press debates whether the measures will be enough to alleviate the housing crisis.
Sign of an insensitive democracy
El País takes the government to task:
“If no measures have been taken so far out of negligence, that is alarming: a democracy that fails to meet the basic needs of its citizens is an isolated, disconnected, insensitive democracy. A political elite that operates at odds with the interests of its society. ... If action is now being taken solely because of the symbolism of an 87-year-old woman, it means that laws are only passed under pressure. ... Not out of conviction, a sense of responsibility or a desire to serve society, but because others are demanding it and this demand has become impossible to ignore. This is a democracy that follows interests rather than principles. It shows how ideologies are perverted and populism prevails.”
Emergency measures are not effective housing policy
La Vanguardia is sceptical about whether the emergency decree will have the desired effect:
“The government managed to save itself by the skin of its teeth and, in the last moment, agreed with its coalition partners on two decrees to halt evictions such as that of 87-year-old Maricarmen from Madrid. ... But will these measures really help to alleviate the housing crisis, or are they merely a stop-gap measure to quell the social unrest that is brewing over this issue? ... Housing will be one of the decisive themes in Spain's next general election. Time is running out for the government to convince its voters that the reforms it has implemented are the right way forward.”
Big investors always a step ahead
Author Isaac Rosa voices resignation in eldiario.es:
“If there's something the real estate lobby has repeatedly demonstrated in recent decades, it's imagination. ... Precisely the imagination that governments apparently lack when it comes to legislating on housing. The funds, property companies and major investors are always one step ahead of the government. ... The Housing Act was already a safeguard against everything that the decrees are now set to tackle, but it has become a sieve, allowing the usual suspects to carry on with business as usual. ... The Housing Act itself was introduced because an earlier, much higher standard was not being upheld: the Constitution, which supposedly enshrines the right to housing. ... I hope the government bears in mind that there are always those who find ways to circumvent the decrees.”