The rentier sector is thriving precisely because there is a huge mass of housing seekers who cannot avoid the need for a roof over their heads and who compete fiercely to obtain such housing. The more there are, the more they will pay for the few apartments that exist.
People who do not have access to housing present their demands poorly because it gives the impression that they believe it is a shared problem that worries all of society. The reality is that housing is not a problem, not for everyone, it may be for some who arrived late to the party, but the reality is that housing is an opportunity to earn money at the expense of capital gains and the work of a little. A great business that doesn’t want to stop.
Housing is not a problem for rentiers, housing is not a problem for those who were lucky enough to have access to it many years ago and who have already paid for it, not even for those who have had a mortgage for years, housing is not a problem for those who inherited it or even for those who know that they will inherit it, housing is certainly not a problem for the PSOE and the PP, who know that all those I have just cited constitute the majority and their target electorate. The last known census from the INE, which dates back to 2021, indicates that only 16% of Spaniards live in rentals, although this percentage has increased, it will barely reach 20% at the moment. You are a minority, but yes, a minority which, as a company, is very juicy.
A bad diagnosis and a bad approach prevent effective solutions from being found. If you think that housing is a problem, that the government is concerned, that administrations and parties are also concerned, and that you therefore want to find a way out of the fair demand for access to housing, you lose your concentration and your pressure strategies will fall. on deaf ears. As long as people who do not have access to housing realize that it is necessary to maintain a social mass in this precarious housing situation to extract their resources and do business with abusive rents, they will not be able to resolve their situation. Have working-class young people thought about what would happen to homeowners’ lucrative incomes if the right to housing was guaranteed? Do you really believe that they will provide a fair solution to their precariousness when this means that rentiers would stop living off other people’s money without worrying about it?
The rentier sector is thriving precisely because there is a huge mass of housing seekers who cannot avoid the need for a roof over their heads and who compete fiercely to obtain such housing. The more there are, the more they will pay for the few apartments that exist. The rentier business requires an army of tenants in the reserve to guarantee returns above 10%. If anyone really believes that this bubble is going to burst just because a few scruffy people and a few thousand proletarians can’t make plans for the future and end up spending everything they earn working like sons of bitches to give this money for rentiers, it is who still does not know what the capitalist system is. The plan is precisely that: making housing a massive transfer of income from those who have the least to those who have the most. First read Marx, Bakunin, Davis, Fisher, Fraser and Luxemburg, then build barricades. It’s the only thing that will give them a chance.
The solutions, once we know that those in power have no incentive to solve the housing problem, appear as enlightenment. Go out into the streets and burn things. The same as always, the one who has worked throughout history to change the situation of the most damaged. It is necessary to make it more costly for leaders to do nothing rather than to do it. Force them to put pressure on the streets, in the wildest way possible. This is not something I am going to reveal to you now, tomorrow there will be a demonstration, and it will be of no use if it is massive, which it must be. It must be massive, lasting and prevent all those in power from looking away. You don’t have to give them a break. Complaining for a while won’t help, and believing that a left-wing government like the one we have is going to significantly change a structural problem like this is so naive that it deserves to keep things the same.
The other solution is to be imaginative and give in to cynicism. If you don’t have a house, it’s because you don’t think big, and that won’t be the case because the news hasn’t given us many examples. Bárbara Rey managed to obtain reserved funds from the State to pay her more than 600 million pesetas in easy installments to pay off her vest’s mortgage. Isabel Díaz Ayuso lives on a whim in her boyfriend’s house after he was the victim of an attack at one of the large private health care contracting companies in the Community of Madrid and after committing fraud the Public Treasury through shell companies and simulated invoices. Look at Jessica, an activist for decent housing who goes unnoticed for her talent in fighting for a roof over her head. He managed to obtain a corrupt plot to strike him in the Torres de Madrid for having had relations with José Luis Ábalos. And this yes, genius and figure, which pushed Koldo to find him a cottage in Cadiz for the summer and his alliances that some businessmen paid to see if they could obtain hydrocarbon licenses for him. Don’t tell me there’s no way to get decent housing. Do you see that this is not a problem? So we need to make this an issue for those who view housing as a marketable good. Against rentism and speculation, barbarism. They don’t understand anything else.
