The spokesperson for the Tenants’ Union of Catalonia, Carme Arcarazo, has warned in an appearance in the Congress of Deputies that her organization will call a “rent strike” if measures such as lowering prices by 50% and converting rents are not legislated. indefinite lease contracts.
“If you do not take brave measures, then yes, they are going to force us to declare a rent strike“Arcarazo stated in the Congressional Housing Commission, which for a few weeks has been holding sessions in which it listens to housing experts from different fields.
Arcarazo has assured that every week tenants from “whole blocks who are desperate and want to go on strike” address his organization and explained that this type of protests are being called in cities like Toronto, while in others like New York it is legal to stop paying if the landlord does not fulfill his part of the contract.
He has also pointed out that in Spain there was a rent strike in 1931, in which 100,000 families participated. “This is serious and is not an invention,” he stressed.
From price drops to purchase bans
In her appearance, the spokesperson for the Tenants’ Unions called for four measures: lower rental prices by 50% by decree, convert lease contracts into indefinite ones, incorporate empty homes and those with “anomalous” uses into the rental pool -like office and tourist, he said-, and prohibit the purchase of houses if it is not to live in them for at least four years.
As he said, there are indefinite rental contracts in Germany, Austria and Denmark, while in Sweden they are “automatic renewal” and in the Netherlands they had them indefinite, but they liberalized the market and now they have them again after realizing the ” mistake” they had made when removing them.
Arcarazo has directly blamed the deputies for the fact that housing rental in Spain is “a daily nightmare for thousands and thousands of people and the anguish of an entire generation of young and not so young” and has reproached them for their “lack of political will “.
“You should ask yourself who you work for and who you want to solve the housing problem: Merlin Properties, which has threatened to take its investments out of Spain, or millions of people who live in rent?” he asked them.
After pointing out that in Congress there are 615 homes declared by 208 deputies, he has accused them of having been working for years to turn the country into a “tax haven for rentiers“and recalled that next Saturday, November 23, there is a demonstration called to “fill the streets” of Barcelona for the right to housing.
Wave of demonstrations
That day there are also tenant protests called in Burgos, Jerez and Oviedo, within a wave of mobilizations that will continue on November 30 in Zaragoza, on December 1 in Salamanca and on December 14 in Bilbao.
The proposals of the Tenants’ Union have been applauded by Sumar and Podemos, while the PP and the PNV have rejected them on the grounds that they would end the offer and further aggravate the problem.
The PNV spokesperson, Maribel Vaquero, has opined that a rent strike would generate “more fear in a circuit in which in the end the one who always pays the price is the one who has the greatest need for housing, which are young people and immigrants.” .
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