Sumar is looking for a plan B to ensure that seasonal and room rentals do not escape the price regulation of the housing law. After Junts announced on Tuesday, three minutes before the vote in Congress, a change in the direction of its vote that overturned the admission to process of the bill promoted by the parliamentary group led by Yolanda Díaz, the minority partner of the Government, as EL PAÍS has been able to find out, will force a new vote on this law, but this time it will be in the Justice Commission. The debate will probably take place next month, and it will do so through a series of amendments registered last July to the Public Service of Justice law, dependent on the ministry led by Félix Bolaños, a text that has nothing to do with the subject of housing, nor with the so-called golden visaand the PSOE also presented an initiative in this law to prohibit obtaining a residence permit in exchange for the purchase of a property worth more than half a million euros.
The Sumar measure proposes modifying the Urban Leasing Law to give priority over temporary rentals to regular rentals, which will be the default type, provided that it is not specified that it is a short-term contract. The governing party also intends to limit the duration of temporary housing rental contracts to six months and to force the landlord to specify in them the reason for this temporary nature. In addition, it stipulates that deposits cannot exceed one month’s rent, that repairs are the responsibility of the owner and that the termination of the contract does not entail costs for the tenant with only ten days’ notice.
The party’s initiatives, to which a third must be added that proposes that the rental contract be indefinite by default to give “security and stability” to families, as well as “roots in the neighborhoods”, were registered before the summer break by the Compromís deputy and second vice president of the Housing and Urban Agenda Commission, Alberto Ibáñez. “We understand that, given the difficulty of parliamentary arithmetic, we must take advantage of any legislative possibility to advance in housing matters,” justifies the deputy. So far in this legislature, the Government has already imposed this practice – that of sneaking measures unrelated to the content of a norm into one that has a chance of being approved – in the parity law, where PSOE and Sumar incorporated an amendment to prevent the Senate from rejecting the spending ceiling.
The debate will once again force the parties to take a position on a problem, that of housing, which has already become one of the main concerns of citizens, according to the CIS. But the formula now proposed by Sumar does not seem simple. The PSOE gave its support on Tuesday to the admission of the law, which prevents more than two contracts for six months being chained together, and given the tightness of the vote, it even made the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, travel to Congress, because otherwise the numbers would not add up. However, if the amendment is approved, the measure would be approved as is, without the possibility of changes or adjustments as would occur with a bill during the parliamentary process, because the commission has legislative powers (although the global text must then be approved in plenary). To the uncertain position of the socialists we should also add the doubts of the PNV, with which Sumar negotiated quite a bit to allow the norm to at least begin its journey through Congress, but without total support for the text.
Added to these difficulties is the position of Junts, which has been heavily criticised since its last-minute change of opinion, and is now firmly in favour of no. The separatists have justified that they never believed that the law would have enough support to be approved and that they changed their vote when they saw real possibilities of it being successful, but they argue that they cannot support an initiative that “invades” the powers of the autonomous communities. “These are amendments that respect the framework of powers, since both the seasonal rental and the rental of rooms will then be applied or not by the communities, according to their majorities, according to the law,” Ibáñez replies. Sumar, in any case, will have to negotiate if it wants to attract them back to the investiture block. “From the Plurinational Group we are always open to dialogue, to negotiation, to everything that means moving forward and guaranteeing majorities that respect ideological coherence, which is to guarantee the right to housing and to avoid the speculative view that other groups have,” he adds about possible modifications to his proposals.
The change of position of Junts has greatly angered the Executive, but especially Sumar, which had been working for weeks to gather support for the text and assures that since Monday they had already secured their abstention. The party of the former president Carles Puigdemont, they say, was not inclined to the norm, but he did not want to cut ties with it either. Loggers’ Union (Tenants’ Union), promoter of an initiative that was also signed by ERC, EH Bildu, Podemos and BNG. “They have acted in a deeply unfair way that brings them closer to Trumpist positions. When you negotiate and give your word, you have to comply,” says Ibáñez. This Wednesday, the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, announced in the corridors of Congress that her department will speed up a decree for the regulatory development of the Urban Leasing Law to combat fraud in temporary rentals, initially planned for before the end of 2025. Sumar believes that this is a “complementary” measure but considers this matter to be extremely urgent.
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