The anti-eviction moratorium of the social shield, promoted at the beginning of the pandemic and extended until December 31, has prevented around 25% of the tenant launches that could have been carried out throughout the state until 2023. This is the estimate that has made the DESCA Observatory in a report presented this Tuesday together with the PAH of Barcelona. The crux of this coin are the more than 135,000 families that have been left on the streets despite the measure.
The financial crisis of 2008 put the drama of evictions on the public agenda, but time shifted the focus away from the demand. According to the report, between 2008 and 2023, 735,560 judicial launches were carried out throughout the country, affecting more than 1.8 million people. “This means that 3.8% of the population has lost their habitual residence” in that period, they indicate.
To face the health and social emergency that began in 2020 with the Covid pandemic, the coalition government of the PSOE and, then, Unidas Podemos, launched the so-called “social shield”, which included the extraordinary suspension of evictions derived from non-payments or terminations of rental contracts for the habitual residence of vulnerable families and which was extended in 2021 to civil evictions of occupations and crimes of usurpation under certain situations, such as the families having been living in the properties from before that year and who had minors or dependents in their care. The measure has been extended and, for the moment, it is scheduled to end on December 31 of this year.
“The most striking thing is that there is no data or estimates of the effects of the moratorium,” indicates the head of Housing and City at the DESCA Observatory, Guillem Domingo. In their work, the researchers have taken as reference the figures of launches carried out by the General Council of the Judiciary and, through a request for public information, they have obtained data from the reports generated by social services, which must prove the vulnerability of the families. “It is the closest data we can find,” indicates the author, and “with the information on suspensions and evictions carried out, the figures from 2020 and until 2024 are extrapolated to the entire territory, because many do not provide complete data.”
Specifically, the report estimates that “one in every 4 launches would have been suspended due to the application of the social shield moratorium.” In total, in these four years there would be 58,000 executions, about 11,593 per year. “We want to put this data on the table, to be able to discuss to what extent it has been effective or not and how it should be improved,” says Domingo. As can be seen in the following graph and the report endorses, based on data from the General Council of the Judiciary, in the year of the pandemic, launches “reduced by almost 50% compared to 2019”, while in 2021 “they increased 40.6% compared to the previous year.”
“The debate now is whether this measure should continue and the data leads us to say yes and that, in addition, it must be improved and resources must be provided by all administrations in the form of housing, so that it is not just a suspension, but that families at risk obtain solutions,” clarifies the person responsible for Housing at the Observatory. Maintain it to protect the protection of those more than 50,000 families and improve it to guarantee the rest. A demand that they also convey from the PAHwhich demands that the moratorium have no time limitation “until a solution and decent housing are guaranteed” and that “the compensation system be modified to hold large owners who have commodified housing co-responsible.” “Once the pandemic has been overcome, what has not been overcome is speculation or abusive housing prices, which cause thousands of families to continue drowning and an average of 130 evictions a day, despite having a moratorium to prevent them,” they stated. in a statement at the beginning of the month.
Asked about a possible extension of the social shield for tenant evictions, the Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez, has chosen to avoid the answer. “Prudence means that we have to wait for the right moment to be able to answer this question,” he said this Sunday in an interview with The Country. This Tuesday, the director of the Observatory Irene Escorihuela and the co-spokespersons of the PAH Juanjo Ramón and Paco Morote were accompanied by representatives of Sumar, ERC, Bildu, Podemos and BNG, who would be joined, they said, by the support of Junts.
The underlying objective of the moratorium is to give Social Services time to find solutions to avoid launching. The report delves into the history of families who, in 77.8% of cases, already had prior monitoring of these resources, but also into the type of support provided to them. “Public financial aid through which Social Services reinforce the payment of minimum vital expenses without avoiding the launch,” indicates the work, “is observed in 77% of the cases in which they intervene” and, in 12% In most cases, aid is offered to reinforce the search for own housing alternatives.
Among the different assistance responses offered by administrations, the fewest are the allocation of social protection housing, applied in only 3% of the cases analyzed, and temporary alternative accommodation, in 2%. These figures only deepen the shortage of public housing in Spain. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced on December 1, during the 41st federal congress of the PSOE in Seville, the Executive’s intention to create a public company, capable of “building and managing housing.”
What the Government has extended is the suspension of mortgage evictions, until 2028. In June, all political forces approved the validation of a decree law to extend this measure, after an agreement with Sumar, Podemos and Bildu.
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