The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and the deputy mayor Maria Eugenia Gay, during the joint commission with the Generalitat in October, in which housing policy was the protagonists. Albert García
The government of the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni (PSC), and the community group of the Commons, led by his predecessor Ada Colau, led this Tuesday a tough and unprecedented confrontation over the management of the housing crisis in Barcelona. It was during the city council's social justice commission. The deputy mayor of the residential area, Maria Eugènia Gay, said she was “completely perplexed by the situation they have left behind”. [los comunes]: alarming, dramatic and a real failure,” he said. “Young people have been driven out of Barcelona, rents have risen, the housing crisis has collapsed. “Housing is not defended by the owner,” he accused, listing figures such as the 682 families waiting at the emergency housing table, whose housing allocation takes between two and up to four years, depending on family size. The Socialists' toughness surprised citizens, who remembered that they had governed together in the last two terms. It remains to be seen whether Gay's words will undermine talk of Collboni and Colau putting together an eventual left-wing government.
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The deputies had asked for the appearance of the deputy mayor Gay to give explanations on what they have been denouncing for days as a “change in criteria” in the management of evictions, in the case of the neighbor Blanca in the Gòtic, which ended up the street after years Mediation between the local council and the property. After a long intervention reading, the person responsible for social rights assured that “there has been no change in the criteria”. And after the groups' answers, she insisted: “We must rethink the model, promote autonomy plans, promote information about the weak and not store it in any way,” the government member continued, concluding: “Accompany people beyond the borders . “Day they leave home.”
The local councilor Carolina Recio responded to Gay that during her time in government “housing policy was at the center” and assured that both her party and the city’s social movements “smell” that there has been a change in criteria, especially “political criteria”, and charged that “it remains unclear what happened in the Blanca case.” And after Gay's final intervention, he responded: “The tone of your response surprises me. 80,000 people were able to stay in their rental apartments, nine out of ten evictions were stopped, we preserved the social function of housing… Blanca is not at home, we have not received an answer, she has given a technical answer in a situation that is political Will requires. I remind you that we had a common government.”
The government and community were also criticized by the rest of the opposition. On behalf of Junts, city councilor Neus Munté also criticized eviction figures or rent increases for citizens, which she saw as “political tactics” in demanding Gay's appearance. “We have heard day after day that politics is the focus, but the numbers are stubborn and the situation is not improving,” Munté said. He only admitted to Colau that in his two mandates the government, together with the opposition, had to “act responsibly, in very extreme situations” in which it worked. Eva Baró from the ERC called for there to be “a clear procedure” in cases like Blanca’s. “The eviction has been stopped several times, the administration has failed in the last six years since its first rescue,” he explained. The PP also described the policies of the City Council and the Generalitat as a “failure”.
The price index that will regulate the rent is unknown
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In addition to the city council, with regard to housing construction, this Tuesday there were also statements on the rental price index, which was drawn up by the Ministry of Housing and is scheduled to be completed in February. The application of price regulation in 140 municipalities of Catalonia depends on the final approval of the index. In this sense, the tenants' union warned that “the PSOE proposes an index with a price range and not a fixed price, with the risk that the highest price will be applied,” said the organization's spokesman, Enric Aragonès. “We knew that it was an index with very high prices, which had regulatory implications that were intended to reduce prices and would be limited to freezing. “It cannot be that the reference is the prices, which have the highest bubble that the rental price has ever had. We cannot normalize these prices, which lead many people to spend half of their income on financing housing,” explained Aragonès, calling for “a reduction in the regulation prices.” According to the Housing Code, no new contract can exceed the price of the previous one contract, and for large owners the price must adjust to the index, even if this means a price decrease.
The pressure from the Union complements the words of the Minister for Territories responsible for housing, Ester Capella, who warned about the “price range” in Parliament last week. “If the spread is very open, the high spread can be applied and prevent prices from falling.” Capella explained that they tried to prove this to the ministry “using a sample of 32,000 contracts to show that income suppression will never become a reality , if the range is large.”
The Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, assured after the Council of Ministers that her ministry “takes inspiration from the index that Catalonia had” when regulating prices between 2020 and 2022. “I wish that the rest of the municipalities where there is stress are stressed.” Market areas “have the predisposition to apply the price suppression law.” Rodríguez revealed that city councils of municipalities that do not want to apply the regulation or have even appealed against it, demanding that their regional governments be able to regulate rents.
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