The leader of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, urged the PSOE this Sunday to approve the housing law “even if it is for electoralism”, and accused them of lack of “commitment” with social rights for having taken three years to apply the said standard.
“We cannot waste the last year of the legislature cleaning up the balls that the right throws at us. We have an obligation to govern and take advantage of this government until the last minute to solve the structural problems that the Spaniards have“, assured in the act ‘Live, not survive. Housing is a right’.
A few days ago, the First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, and the Minister of Finance and Public Service, María Jesús Montero, said that there was still “very few problems to close” to reach an agreement within the coalition government on the approval of the housing law which is being processed in Congress and that it has been “virtually done”.
However, the leader of Unidas Podemos corrected the socialist wing of the government and refused no agreement on this issue with the PSOE.
Belarra lamented that Spaniards “live suffocated by housing” because “the market has become the law of the fittest”, which has led to housing “being big Spanish business”. “In Spain, people go into debt for life to pay for a house and this must stop. Houses are made for living, not for speculating. A home is a right that gives access to all other rights,” he said.
Regarding the housing law, the minister suggested that the rule is blocked because “the former socialist minister Joan Clos -now at the head of one of the main real estate employers in Spain- He has a very long list of contacts.”. He also said that there are people who think the PSOE’s delay “is related to the meetings with the vulture funds”.
“We must continue to stop evictions without alternative housing. That every vulnerable family at risk of eviction has alternative housing and increase the stock of social housing with this reserves 30% of all new promotions that are made and all upgrades that are made,” it said.
Urgently regulate rental prices
In this sense, he stressed that Spain “urgently” needs a “decent” housing law, capable of “effectively” regulate rental prices in stressed areas.
“Rent is probably the biggest schism of inequality that currently exists in Spain. The rent is a pump to extract income from the most humble of our society towards those who have the most income. We take income from the working classes to give it to the people who have the most money in our society,” he said.
In short, Belarra insisted that when he was given the social rights portfolio, he knew that without “attacking the root” of the housing problem, social rights in Spain could not be guaranteed. “That is why we have worked hard to introduce into the social shield the most ambitious housing measures that have ever been taken, such as a Massive intervention on rental prices or the automatic extensions of the lease contracts”, detailed.
The second vice-president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Héctor Illueca; the Podemos candidate for mayor of Madrid, Roberto Sotomayor; the candidate of the Community of Madrid, Alejandra Jacinto; the candidate for the presidency of the government of the Balearic Islands, Antònia Jover; the candidate for the presidency of Aragon, Maru Díaz; and the Minister of Social Rights of the Government of the Canary Islands, Noemí Santana.