This Tuesday, Congress annulled the pending admission of a bill to regulate seasonal rentals and reduce their duration to six months. This is a text promoted by tenants’ unions, who have been denouncing for months that this type of contract is the main loophole used by owners to circumvent the price regulation of the Housing Law, approved by the legislature. The PP, Vox, Junts and the UPN joined their 178 votes to reject the text. The supporters (Sumar, EH Bildu, Podemos and the BNG) voted in favor, as well as the PSOE, the PNV, the Canarian Coalition and the deputy José Luis Ábalos.
After several weeks of negotiations led by Sumar, who, together with Podemos, EH Bildu and the BNG, promoted this law drawn up by the tenants’ unions, the majority of the groups had previously announced the direction of their vote. Junts, in a very critical speech, had raised the possibility of an abstention that would have allowed the law to be passed by a single vote.
But he finally chose “no”. The law thus had the support of the majority of the investiture this Tuesday, with the exception of Junts, which maintains its refusal to support the bloc that supports the Government. Next week, Congress must vote on the budgetary trajectory, a preliminary step to the negotiation of the 2025 accounts.
The rule rejected this Tuesday comes from the tenants’ unions, who registered it a few weeks ago in Congress with the help of Sumar, Podemos, EH Bildu and BNG. It was about filling one of the main gaps left unanswered in the Housing Law of the last legislature, that of seasonal rentals, the subterfuge that, according to supporters, many owners use to circumvent the price controls of the standard. places where it is applied, for example in Catalonia.
“The change involves amending the law on urban leases [LAU]»Laura Benedetti, from the Llogateres union, explained at the time that temporary and room rentals have a more limited duration. “A new article is established that states that the maximum duration of a seasonal contract would be six months and, if it is exceeded, it is considered habitual rental housing,” he explained. “The rights of tenants are equalized and the use of this type of figure is discouraged.” “There should be a general presumption of habitual housing contracts, to avoid families being evicted from neighborhoods and rents continuing to rise,” he said.
“While the LAU requires the owner to enter into five or seven-year contracts, during which the rental price cannot increase beyond inflation, the fraudulent use of seasonal contracts allows the tenant to be evicted and the rental prices to increase year after year. In this way, it has become a growing economic model, which radically conflicts with the exercise of the right to housing enshrined in our Constitution,” states the explanatory statement of the text.
The bill introduces, on the one hand, the obligation for the owner to justify the need for temporary employment. To do this, it has amended Article 2 of the law, with a new article: “For there to be a justified cause of temporality, the contract must specify precisely the cause that allows the temporality, the particular circumstances that justify it and its link with the expected duration. If they are not duly accredited, it will be presumed that said contract concerns the habitual residence.
“The obligation to verify whether these circumstances exist lies with the lessor, who must first request the information from the tenant and expressly indicate it in the contract. It will be understood that these circumstances do not exist, if the owner does not require them, in which case a rental contract for a habitual residence will be presumed”, adds the proposal of this article.
The proposal amends Article 9a to reduce the time limits so that they cannot exceed six months. “In the event that the contract has been concluded for a period less than the maximum legal duration established and that at its completion the reason that caused the temporary duration still existed, it may be extended by express agreement of the parties, without ever exceeding the maximum duration. . of six months”, the text adds. However, when its duration “exceeds six months” or “more than two consecutive contracts are linked”, “the first will be considered as being concluded as a contract for the rental of a habitual residence, and all the precepts provided for such contracts will apply”. “contracts”.
Sumar calls for ending cracks in housing law
“Seasonal rentals have become a loophole through which owners can commit legal fraud,” denounced Sumar’s spokesman, Íñigo Errejón, who defended the text in today’s debate. “The LAU requires the owner to enter into five- or seven-year contracts, during which the rental price cannot exceed the CPI. What do they do? “Many owners fraudulently use seasonal contracts and can therefore increase the rental price from year to year or evict tenants,” he denounced.
“I wanted my first words to be of gratitude and recognition to the tenants’ unions who are the ones who promoted this law to regulate seasonal rentals, which is nothing more than the great void that the Socialist Party left in the Housing Law,” said the secretary general of Podemos, Ione Belarra, who, as Minister of Social Rights, signed this standard that Congress ended up approving at the end of the last legislature. Belarra’s party then fought within the government to include the regulation of seasonal rentals in this standard, but the PSOE ended up refusing.
ERC and EH Bildu fear that the right is distorting the norm
ERC and EH Bildu announced their vote in favour of its consideration, but both forces warned of the difficulties the text would encounter if it were finally adopted.
ERC and EH Bildu have warned of the risk that the parliamentary right will take advantage of this procedure to change essential elements of the housing law approved in the last legislature.
Catalan MP Pilar Vallugera ironically stated that the PNV and Junts are authorising the bill to be processed (with one “yes” and one abstention, respectively), while both groups were opposed to regulating holiday rentals precisely in the Housing Law of the last legislature. “What is the reason that has led them to change their ideology?”
Valluguera warned against introducing amendments to the procedure that distort the objectives of the norm. “Because the right, whether they like it or not, is in the majority. And some of them supported the investiture, but when they touched their pockets…”, concluded the ERC deputy.
EH Bildu MP Oskar Matute also spoke in the same vein. “We would not want to examine this law and then end up with an endless extension,” he warned.
“We ask for clarity, determination and firmness,” he asked from the podium. “We believe that in the face of speculation, there is only room for firmness. The left is not here to save the furniture of capitalism, but to build fairer societies. And there can be no just society without housing for everyone,” he concluded.
PNV, “critical vote”
The warnings of the Basque and Catalan independentists refer to the objections that Junts and the PNV have made to the text that has been debated in this text, although with different results. He notes that in the case of Junts, it has become negative. His spokesperson on this issue, Marta Madrenas, has criticized practically all the points related to the limitation of seasonal rentals and rooms and has focused on proposing other measures to solve the housing problem in general, such as the transfer of the properties of Sareb. by the municipal councils. “We have proposed it dozens of times, promoting public-private collaboration, without demonizing it,” he said.
The PNV voted in favor, but warned that its vote would be “very critical.” “What happens to students, to resident interns…? We regulate a figure by limiting its object and we dress one saint to dress another. The problem does not come from the temporary housing contracts but from the terrible regulation of these in the Housing Law,” said the spokesperson for the nationalists Maribel Vaquero. A reluctant “yes” that did not help the law to pass even its first process.
