Ángela, affected by the sale of public apartments in Madrid that achieved social rent: “My children have had a terrible time”

Ángela has opened a new breach in a conflict that has been festering for eight years, since the Justice issued the first ruling that annulled the sale of 3,000 public housing units to Goldman Sachs. This woman, 48 years old, and mother of a large family, was evicted in 2016 by the fund when the social bonuses on her rent disappeared. After starting a legal fight, he has managed to get a judge to force the Community of Madrid to give him a new public apartment. When he received the call from his lawyer he screamed with excitement. Then he started crying and celebrated the sentence with his entire family. The ruling is not final and the regional government has announced that it will appeal.

This woman asks the public administration, the one governed by Ignacio González (PP) in 2013 and who sold her home to Encasa Cibeles, a company 97% owned by the American fund, “to realize the damage they have caused” because His children “have had a terrible time.” Ángela remembers the first day that her entire family entered a house that they were given by lottery in Valdecarros. It was 2009. “Everything was perfect,” he points out, while explaining that “the children were very happy” in that apartment.

The Community of Madrid awarded him a home due to his “special need” and “agreed to reduce his rent by 90% and, subsequently, by 95%, based on his economic situation, a situation that has not improved,” he says. the sentence issued on September 23 by the Contentious-Administrative Court number 33 of Madrid. Angela, who at that time worked as a sweeper, paid a monthly rent of 50 euros.

With the change of landlord, social discounts disappeared and Ángela began to accumulate unpaid bills, as she herself acknowledges. Around him, his neighbors began to leave the building for this very reason. “I couldn’t cope [a esa cantidad]”I asked for help from social services, Cáritas and I don’t know how many other things,” he recalls. No one explained to her the consequences that the sale of public housing would have for her and her family. He only received one letter, which he had a hard time interpreting.

In 2016 she and her family were evicted. “I took all my things and went to La Cañada for a while. [Real]”, he relates. That traumatic departure from what was his home for seven years, overflowing with suitcases and furniture, has left him with psychological consequences. “I have not asked for an apartment in La Moraleja. I have asked for a house to be comfortable with my children, because I am not worth living in any home that is not mine,” he adds.

1,700 homes recovered by the Community

Eight years after that launch, a judge ruled in favor of him. Angela does not have to start a new request for social housing and wait for it to be drawn or the administration grants it to her. In the first instance, Justice considers that the Community of Madrid, at least in this case, “must respond to the appellant’s housing need that it itself has created.” And he adds that the plaintiff cannot be “harmed by an administrative action that has been declared null and void and has become final.”

There is no data on the number of people who were evicted after public housing was taken into private hands. Of the 3,000 homes that the fund acquired, the Community of Madrid has only recovered 1,700. The rest were sold during the years in which Encasa Cibeles was the owner of these real estate developments.

Since the conflict broke out, the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM) has provided help and support to tenants who have requested it. Its spokesman, Enrique Villalobos, says that of the 3,000 public housing winners, the sector that most blamed the consequences of the sale were the 700 tenants who entered those houses with a social rent. As he points out, “the rest were young renters”, with an option to buy, and the majority of them did not face difficulties with the change of landlord.

Ángela did not leave the apartment until she had a court ruling that forced her to do so. Other tenants of those homes abandoned them without needing to reach that situation. Marian M, who received a house in Soto del Henares, left “because of the harassment she suffered.” “The rent they wanted to give me was abusive, 800 euros. I couldn’t pay it. He had two children and a third on the way. Until then I paid 120 euros,” he explained to this editorial team. Encasa Cibeles has ensured at all times that there was never “pressure” for residents who were not up to date with their bills to leave their homes.

Now, after hearing Angela’s sentence, Marian M. is studying whether to go to court, since she claims that after asking the Community of Madrid to return her apartment, she has not received a response. After the entire administrative and bureaucratic journey, you feel helpless in your search for a solution. He regrets that there are no facilities for those affected by the sale of public housing. “It’s as if we don’t exist,” he says.

After leaving their home, their family fell apart due to the uncertainty and worry they experienced when they saw that they could not pay the rent. Since then he has shared a house with five other people. For her part, Ángela had to leave the Community of Madrid in search of an affordable apartment. Right now, he resides in a relative’s house in a town in Toledo, 96 kilometers from the center of the capital, waiting for the Justice Department to determine whether it is confirmed that he has the right to a public apartment again.