A “historical” law, preceded by a “historical” agreement, which marked a “historical” milestone. Everything was presented as “historic” in the housing law approved in April 2023. They used the same adjective from the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), to the leader of Podemos, Ione Belarra, through a whole catalog of figures from the government left. Their diagnosis agreed in essence: progressive forces had finally put their stamp on the housing market. It hadn’t been easy. The law came out after multiple clashes within the Government and under pressure both from the movement for the right to housing – which pushed for the approval of the law and ended up receiving it with skepticism – and from an incessant carousel of data that confirmed the social havoc due to high prices. But, according to its promoters, years of negotiations amid tensions had been worth it. “A paradigm shift was coming,” said Sánchez.
A year and a half ago. And there has been no before and after. Neither by law, nor by any other measure. The PSOE and Sumar Government, successor to the one that promoted the norm, continues – like a good part of Spanish society – without shaking off the housing problem, which continues to be corrected and increased. The dynamic in which the Executive is immersed is similar to the last legislature. The tensions between the partners have continued – also over the land law – and continue – now in the budget negotiation. Social unrest is expressed in the streets and could do so with greater force in the coming weeks. The main protest groups, such as the tenant unions and the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH), are disappointed by the Government, which suffers the added limitation of its narrow range of powers, since the majority are in the hands of the autonomous communities. And all the indicators – poverty, emancipation, income dedicated to rental, social and intergenerational inequality, among others – reveal a worsening of the problems associated with housing.
Sociologist specialized in housing Daniel Sorando is not surprised by the panorama. “No one who knows the market expected visible results in a year and a half, even more so when two holes remained open – seasonal and tourist rentals – that were difficult to close with the current Congress. But the left has a problem with housing, and not only with this law: between the expectations it creates and what it can achieve there is a chasm, partly due to electoralism that hides the fact that tangible changes take years. The Government ends up transmitting a feeling of impotence and reacts with internal conflicts,” explains the professor from the University of Zaragoza, who affirms that this is the area in which the Executive “finds it most difficult to harmonize positions among partners, achieve visible results and obtain the support of mobilized social organizations.”
Eduardo González de Molina, associate researcher at the University College of London, sees it this way: “In Spain there is no progressive tradition of housing policy. The consensus has always been based on market dominance. Until the 2008 crisis, there has not been a big difference between PP and PSOE. Now yes. But now there are three problems. The first is power sharing. If the PP communities [preside 11] They are not going to apply price control, the feeling will be that the law is useless. Furthermore, Congress is more right-wing than the last legislature. The second problem is that the PSOE and Sumar come from different political cultures, which is especially reflected in housing. And the third is the most serious: Spain has decades of underdevelopment in social housing policies. If the results are always slow, even more so when you come from so low.”
Some figures illustrate this “underdevelopment.” When the law was approved, homes with some public protection regime represented 1.6% of homes, compared to 30% in the Netherlands, 24% in Austria and 16.8% in France, according to government data. a phenomenon caused by the massive privatization of real estate for decades. “With so little public park, your ability to influence the market is very low. It would take two decades to converge with Europe,” says González de Molina. Another fact: in 2021, the last year in which Eurostat compares all EU countries, Spanish administrations spent 32.8 euros per inhabitant on housing, compared to almost 120 per person spent in the EU as a whole. Although the state budget has risen sharply – from 473 million in 2018 to 3,472 million in 2023, more than 70% of which come from euro funds – “the accumulated delay is enormous,” says Sorando.
This sociologist, author of First we take Manhattan. The creative destruction of citiesbelieves that the relations between the PSOE and the parties to its left are doomed to conflict around housing, as seen – he says – in the coalition Executives and was seen in the PSOE and IU Government in Andalusia between 2012 and 2015. One reason is “impatience” with the delay in results, which leads to “continually improvising new announcements” that generate “friction,” he points out. But that is not the most important reason. The key is ownership and ideology. “Although the percentage of households that receive real estate income does not reach 10%, more than 75% of housing is owned. “This marks a mentality that becomes alarmed when an attempt is made to introduce any measure that reduces the value of the home,” Sorando responds, citing data from the Treasury and the INE. “The result is constant tension between the PSOE, which is more ambiguous because it fears scaring part of its voters and is less inclined to confront the lobby real estate that determines that mentality, and parties like Podemos and Sumar, which want to set a profile and protect their electorate with more forceful positions. It’s a loop,” he explains.
High official in the housing area of the Generalitat from 2004 to 2011, considered the ideologue of the 2007 law that marked the transition to progressive autonomous legislation for an entire decade, Carme Trilla affirms that effective policies require continuity for the that a greater understanding between the PSOE and the parties to its left is essential. What the president of the Habitat 3 Foundation describes is a kind of “vicious circle”: “The radical left – let’s call it – blames the owners excessively for the problems, a discourse that distances the PSOE towards centrist positions that in turn reinforce their partners in the idea that they do not want to change things.” Trilla affirms that the Government has the opportunity to apply “the same logic” to housing as it does to work: “If the labor market reforms are agreed upon, and achieve results, why not in housing? Why dialogue and the transfer is seen as a failure?
The vision of the ministry and Sumar
David Lucas, Secretary of State for Housing (PSOE), takes the data that present a gloomy picture in terms of access to a roof as “a motivation.” It underlines an idea: the Government “is laying the foundations” of a policy that will end up modifying an entire trend. He highlights the change from the little more than 11,000 public homes that the PP Government, according to him, had in its portfolio in 2018 to the 184,000 that the current Executive intends to “mobilize” this legislature, of which it hopes to deliver the majority before the end of its term. . It is the type of measure that, he says, will cause a “structural change”, for which he demands from the PP a collaboration that he now regrets not having. And why so much conflict with housing in the Government? Lucas dismisses him: “It’s not like that. There is debate.” And Sumar’s direct criticism of Minister Isabel Rodríguez, for example for asking “small landlords” to “take charge” of “social need” when setting their rents? Lucas defends the minister without arguing: “Sometimes it is not analyzed well or what is saidnor why it is said, nor the context in which it is said. What the minister has been conveying is the need for community involvement to control prices.”
Íñigo Errejón, spokesperson for the Sumar group, is explicit in his recognition of the seriousness of the problem and the existence of discrepancies: “Housing has become a black hole of the welfare state. If you do not close the housing black hole, a good part of the redistributive policies, such as the revaluation of pensions, the increase in the minimum wage and the labor reform, you are passing them on to landlords.” Errejón adds that, if the Government does not respond to the “cry” for changes in the housing market, the Executive “will suffer” and “many people will fall into cynicism and an idea of the impotence of the policy”. Regarding relations with the majority partner of the Government, Errejón’s response suggests that the logic of discrepancy will continue: “The PSOE has to pull, it has to move more.”
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