Sumar sends to the PSOE the package of housing measures that he intends to introduce in the budget project, which government partners continue to negotiate with discretion, but without haste. “The conversations are moving forward, Ernest Urtasun is moving forward, with discretion and a lot of work,” admitted the party’s communications secretary, Elisabeth Duval, last week. Among the demands that those of Urtasun have put on the table, it is necessary to highlight an increase in public investment in housing from 0.5% of annual GDP to 1%. The proposal is included in the program with which Yolanda Díaz presented herself in the 23-J elections. “We will regularly invest, for ten years, 1% of GDP in the construction, purchase, mobilization and rehabilitation of housing to generate a real protected, social, sustainable and affordable rental stock of more than two million protected housing units in the next ten years”, promises the document.
This is not the only measure that the head of the Sumar negotiating team has initiated in the negotiations. Sumar wants remove personal income tax deductions for owners who offer rentals at prices higher than those set by the benchmark index. For funds and companies, there is a surcharge on corporate tax. In addition, among the coalition partners’ proposals, they propose amending the Housing Act to force large tenants to dedicate their properties to social rental.
Housing policies have opened a new divide between executive partners. The withdrawal of the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, who will not condition state aid on strict compliance with the law, has generated deep unease in the ranks of Sumar. Its leadership has been attacking the socialist wing of the government for weeks, accusing it of “lack of ambition”. “What they say they want to do, they take it seriously,” say training sources. Sumar specifically criticizes the fact that the PSOE has registered a battery of non-legislative proposals (PNL) to urge the government to cap the price of housing. A parliamentary strategy that Sumar considers “more aesthetic than effective”. Furthermore, those of Urtasun They consider it negative that the autonomous governments of the PSOE, such as Asturias or Castilla-La Macha, have not declared their territories as tension zones.a necessary step to limit rental prices. Only Catalonia has applied the standard.
This is one of the arguments used by the People’s Party to criticize the low effectiveness of the housing law. A void that Feijóo will try to fill through an invoice that he will register in the coming days. “We are not going to consent to this government’s sit-down strike, which has lasted for more than a year,” popular leader Elías Bendodo declared a few days ago.
Yesterday, a massive mobilization took place to demand an end to the increase in rent prices, which has allowed only 16% of young people to emancipate themselves, according to Sumar.
