Housing is one of the main problems facing Spain today. It is not something new, in fact, it has been going on for decades, but with increasing tourist pressure, a skyrocketed increase of rental prices throughout the country and the next State Housing Plan prepared by the Government, the debate stirs the streets. How did we get here? And, above all, how can we get out?
These are some of the questions they have tried to answer at the meeting for members organized by elDiario.es ‘Housing: future and solutions‘, Jorge Dioni, writer and author of ‘The Spain of the Swimming Pools’ and ‘The Discontent of the Cities’; Alejandro Inurrieta, doctor in Economics, housing specialist; and Valeria Racu, member of the Tenants’ Union.
“We have normalized rentism, doing business with housing, playing with people’s lives is something legitimate and with which you can make money. “You can invest your savings so that someone like me cannot have a house.” With those words, Valeria Racu, whose union has called a demonstration the next day, summed up the current situation. October 13 in Madrid.
A country of rentiers is a country that is paralyzed, according to Jorge Dioni, who explains that this idea is not really particularly revolutionary: it was already assumed by the liberals of the 19th century. “Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations says that there are two enemies of the nation: the man of the system and the rentier man,” he adds, in the conversation moderated by journalist Gumersindo Lafuente.
This is the consequence of years in which the money invested in housing “has ended up in the hands of the owners, the consultants and the real estate lobby”, with a “very high” housing stock, but with that same stock for rent or housing very small public. An x-ray done by Alejandro Inurrieta, with the focus especially on those lobbies and their pressures—which he himself has experienced. But not only: also in the “mafias” of real estate portals like Idealista.
“They are the ones who are threatening and telling the owners not to comply with the housing law, and I know that,” said Inurrieta, who has also criticized that the State relies on those same websites to obtain certain data about which build housing policies. “They are preparing rental contracts in which it is stated in a paragraph that the tenant agrees not to have the benefits of the housing law.” “They are the ones who are creating this security psychosis” about the occupation along with some media outlets, “when the figures say the opposite and they are making gold for the alarm companies.”
a little scandalous
“When the socialist Housing Minister says ‘please, let’s ask the apartment owners to behave well’, it is a bit scandalous from an intellectual point of view,” continues Lafuente, regarding the minister’s statements. Isabel Rodríguez, who demanded solidarity from landlords in the face of the increase in rental prices. “Governments are responsible but landlords are guilty. To this day, no government of any color has really dared to tackle the problem at its roots.” “It means cutting off all the privileges of speculation, making it impossible to do business with housing,” criticized Racu, who denounced a lack of political will.
We have to recognize as a civil society, as a social problem, that rentism as a system is a cancer for our population because what it is doing is extracting rents from the poorest classes for the richest classes.
Meanwhile, Inurrieta indicated that the “State has practically no powers over urban planning and housing issues” at present, but that it is the autonomous communities that have it, but that this lack of action comes because each of the parties does not want to “let go” their piece of the pie.” A cake—a basic necessity—that “has ceased to be a good for public use and has become a market good.”
rent strike
And what could those possible solutions be? Some of them involve controlling real estate speculation, establishing land as a public good and betting on new forms of construction, faster and cheaper than the current ones. Aside from all of them, Racu highlights one: the union organization.
“Organized collectively, we have defeated the largest landlord in the world who wanted to kick out 200 families and not one has left,” explained Valeria Racu. The Tenants’ Union, in addition to this month’s protest, proposes a rent strike through which tenants do not stop paying their rent, but rather have stopped paying clauses that they consider abusive, such as non-payment insurance or community insurance. “Individually we are not going to do much, if we do it collectively we can really overcome this system,” Racu concluded. “Every month with my effort, with my salary and with my money I support the rentier system.” “If we organize and move toward this rent strike, we are clearly going to put the system in check.”
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