The Popular Party has already prepared a bill on housing with which it aims to achieve three objectives. A public, “correcting bad legislation and pernicious”; another of his own, to demonstrate that he is capable of legislate before the courts above (and against) what a “stuck” government wants; and finally, a final look towards the future, recalling PNV and Juntas that beyond identity, These are right-wing parties..
The training of Alberto Nuñez Feijoo faces this new political orientation, aware that Pedro Sanchez He will do “whatever it takes” to exhaust the legislature. Or at least, “lengthen it as much as possible.”
The popular consider that Moncloa is not worried about the idea of extending the budgets again and facing 2025 with the accounts of 2023 – “that is, prepared in 2022”, recalls an official source of the PP -. And in this scenario, Feijóo have developed a legislative project “overtake” the Executive in the Chambers.
It is about choose the initiatives “very well” to cover their quota of proposed laws. and that Alright means, in the words of another PP spokesman, “proposing measures which, to the Basque nationalists and the Catalan independentists, make it difficult for left-wing parties to vote“.
The first of these, if the projects of which this newspaper has knowledge come to fruition, will be in the coming weeks, a housing law “that fixes the mess of the PSOE and Sumar”.
The text was prepared, mainly, by the senator Paloma Martinformer Minister of Housing of the Community of Madrid, with Isabel Diaz Ayuso. And it includes measures aimed at simplifying administrative and bureaucratic procedures, initially, free from the earth.
Urban land for new housing for sale, and others whose qualification allows the construction of social rental apartments, “with public-private collaboration”. This point, according to sources, would be promoted with the participation of municipal councilswho could conclude agreements with the promoters.
Local businesses would give up public land in exchange for the company’s commitment to remove a high percentage of new homes. rent at low prices, “agreed in advance”mainly aimed at young people and families in vulnerable situations.
“Thus, the savings of the company that accesses the public domain, who is concerned is the citizenand not to the promoter’s profit margins,” the sources explain.
“These are soils which They could not be used for sale apartments, but which would enter the market, at affordable prices, with which you have much more offerwhich already relaxes the market, and at low priceswhich further degrades others.”
For the PP, public-private collaboration is the key, “much more than price limitation by public authorities, or direct aid to the citizen, which have proven to be ineffective.”
Because, in this way, This affects supply, not demand.and “by pure economic law” prices would fall. “And what’s more, the effect is much faster, which is what Spain needs”
Diagnosis and prescription
The most popular, curiously, agree with Sánchez’s speech that access to housing, whether purchased or rented, is the main socio-economic evil in Spain. This affects the market as much as families; that is, economic growth as much as social dynamism. But they believe that beyond the diagnosis, “progressive prescription makes things worse.”
“The data,” a third PP source points out, “indicate that where the intervention in the rental market, prices have only increasedbecause the supply of apartments has been reduced.”
Furthermore, they add, “the legal uncertainty “reduces investment in new construction” and fewer apartments are built than the market demands.
And finally, “wages have increased much less than those that intervened and prices have inflated,” so that Young people “can’t do anything but share accommodation”This means that, according to what is said in Genoa, families do not merge, geographical mobility is withdrawn, “and few adult citizens even consider, the possibility of being parents“.
“There is a majority”
The popular party wants to launch in these months a battery of measures on conciliation, housing, health, education and families. “Issues on which, theoretically, there is a centre-right majority in the Chambers”, they emphasize. And the first of them will be this one Housing bill, alternative to the one approved at the end of the last legislature by the PSOE government and Unidas Podemos.
At the moment, the PP has not decided whether or not to present this bill. in the Senate – where it has an absolute majority – or directly in Congress. As EL ESPAÑOL has learned, the decision will be influenced by the political atmosphere that prevails at the time of its public presentation.
That is, in the possibilities that PNV and Junts can imagine to be able to support it. “Both parties are beginning to realize who they have bedridden…we know it they don’t like PP in a part of its ideology, but they don’t like Sanchez either“, explains one of the sources cited.
“So in this situation it is logical to think that, at least in socio-economic terms, choose to legislate based on what their voters want“.
But this is obviously not mathematical. In fact, they have not been until now. The same PNV, which fueled the PP’s hopes last week, traitor to the PSOE during the PNL vote to ask the government to recognize Edmundo González as “president-elect” of Venezuelahas already warned that it is a “specific” event.
Or what is the same, that it was only a “warning”, but that his “road map” remains “the same”, the one that links him to Sánchez.
In fact, the penisuvists They govern the Basque Country in coalition with the PSE. And also last week, the lehendakari He rearranged the pieces on the board.
Imanol Pradales He made some statements in which he demanded that the Sánchez government new status for its Autonomous Community, based on an even greater “bilaterality” than that which the PSOE recognized to Catalonia in the pact with ERC that it concluded president has Salvador Illa.
On the other hand, those of Carles Puigdemont They boast that their “strength” lies in “their ability to reach agreements with both peoples.” And only in this way, PSOE will not relax And The PP will have no hope that his independence movement will be weakened, no matter how much he feels “betrayed.” former president fugitive at Waterloo.
But in the PP, the approach is pure pragmatism with the right-wing Catalan separatists.
On the one hand, they understand that sooner or later “they will come to their senses and They will listen to the Catalan business world“And on the other hand, they understand that the longer the legislature, the more time it will give Puigdemont to be resurrected in the flesh. Sanchez’s “deceptions” since, “unfortunately”, the Constitutional Court will end up “wiping away Puigdemont’s crocodile tears” and granting him amnesty.
All the while, the people intend to go on the offensive, being much more proactive, to exhaust the Executive with their own legislation that can pass the filter of a Congress where “This majority of progress has never existed”.
The strategy, according to our sources, is risky, but it is based on “the use of the force of Frankenstein against himself”, in search of his original contradictions.
Residential and tourist
There is another diagnosis on which the PP shares the opinion of the left-wing parties: it is not viable to maintain the current level of economic effort necessary to access the accommodation.
“That is why, Urgent plans are already underway in Madridto lower prices,” explains one of the sources consulted. The plans put in place foresee the creation of apartments for rent with two bedrooms, with garage, swimming pool and communal spaces, “at prices between 600 and 750 euros”.
Because “it is not possible for people to spend the majority of their salary on a roof”, and that “if someone finally wants to start having a first child, this house must have at least two bedrooms… sharing between young people will be very “cool”, but it is not socially sustainable“.
In this sense, another of the measures provided for in the Housing Bill finalized by the Popular Party also aims to balance the market and avoid the diversion of apartments to vacation rentals. This is the equalization in protection to the owner of residential rentals with the one who benefits from tourist apartments.
“It’s not just about profitability”“It is also because if a tenant stops paying, the police will evict him from the holiday apartment… but in a residential rental, things take months to get sorted out,” the PP explains.
And this is another reason, says the PP, why the supply of rental housing is decreasing: “A absurd regulationwhich looks at things one by one, and not the state of the market, dynamically.
