Isabel Rodríguez has asked political parties for a “state truce” to address the housing crisis in Spain. The minister defended this Wednesday, in an interview in Zero Wavethe package of measures announced by President Pedro Sánchez in a forum this Monday, but he has admitted that it is not “naive” to the parliamentary reality that at least five of the 12 proposals will have to face. “I know that there are nuances and differences between the groups, but there is a bulk on which we could agree,” he said, ensuring that there is “room for negotiation.”
The head of Housing has committed to “make the effort,” which she asks of the rest of the groups, to forget “about other issues to focus on this State truce.” “If they forgot about the headline the next day and paid attention to the need for what it represents, I am sure that we would remove them all,” she said in reference to the announced measures.
Parties to the left of the PSOE have reacted to Sánchez’s announcements lukewarm, if not critical. The Executive’s usual partners, such as Bildu and ERC, have lamented the lack of ambition of the measures and even Sumar has defended that we must “go much further.” “This Government is going from bad to worse and is playing with fire,” warned the general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra. The PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, has described the requests as “interventionist” and has considered that they will further reduce the supply.
“If they criticize me from the right and they criticize me from the left, we are surely getting it right,” the minister responded. Rodríguez has indicated that his role is to ensure that the “competing interests” of all the actors involved “converge for the general good.” He has mentioned the construction sector, the owners and also “the citizens who need housing.”
“Let’s help these owners to rent out more apartments, so that all tenants can have apartments at reasonable prices,” the minister insisted. Precisely, in the package of measures announced by Sánchez there is aid for the rehabilitation of homes to put them on the affordable rental market and tax exemptions of up to 100% for small renters. In the last decade, rental prices have risen more than 30%.
Rodríguez has also made a direct appeal to the Popular Party to support the processing of the Land Law, which he brought to Congress in May but which he had to withdraw due to lack of support, even from his government partners. “For the sake of that agility, what the minister did was put it in the first plenary session that was scheduled, at the beginning of the European campaign. That is why the PP, which is the one with whom this law must be approved, made this a new cause of opposition to the Government, tripping itself. And I know that they have made this known to the president of the PP, who is becoming less and less of a leader,” he explained.
The minister refers to the rule requested by municipalities and autonomies, also from the PP, to speed up urban planning procedures for the construction of housing. “I responded to a demand that came from the city councils and the autonomous communities, urged by Mr. Feijóo, being president of the Xunta, and from the construction sector,” he indicated.
Beyond the package of measures, Rodríguez has considered the possibility of an extension of the General State Budgets, if the Government fails to agree on new ones. “It would be desirable to have budgets in all public administrations, in city councils, in autonomous communities and, of course, in the General State Administration, but, certainly, the arithmetics of all parliaments have led us to squeeze out that exception to work with extended budgets,” he said. “They are very expansive in housing policy and we can reorient them,” he pointed out, on a budget of about 3.5 billion.
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