Measures to curb rental prices for habitual housing have proliferated in recent years in various parts of Europe - with Berlin and Paris as the most prominent cases - and in the world - with the State of California at the forefront. The German capital rehearses with its second regulations in five years to stop the increase in income, with high economic sanctions for the owners who fail to comply with it. The French capital, one of the cities where rent is more expensive, has set a maximum band based on neighborhoods. And California has traveled a similar path, towards price control, but with an unwanted effect: in the two months that elapsed until the rule came into effect, the owners who were going to be affected began to evict tenants to make new contracts
MORE INFORMATION
- The purchase of housing in Spain stops its bleeding, but chains three consecutive months of falls
- The priority of rental housing and sustainability: two of the challenges for the new Governmentc
- Rent drowns family accounts in Spain: buying is already more profitable
Berlin: a maximum increase of 1.3% per year from 2022
In June of last year, the Berlin regional Parliament passed an almost revolutionary law aimed at curbing speculation in rental housing. The law, which came into force last Sunday, freezes the rent increase for five years and puts a maximum ceiling of 9.80 euros per square meter. The measure, which has been rejected by the opposition parties - CDU (center right), FDP (liberals) - both see a serious invasion of private property - and AfD (ultra right), affects the lease contracts of about 1.5 million homes in the German capital, where 85% of the population lives on rent. "Politics has the responsibility that people can afford a roof over their heads," said Berlin Urban Development Manager Katrin Lompscher.
The law allows owners to increase prices by 1.3% annually from 2022 to incorporate expected inflation and all new contracts - except for a few exceptions - must adhere to it, with fines of up to half a million euros for those They break them. The new rule is not, however, the first measure taken in Germany to try to end the speculation that reigns in the country with rents: five years ago, Berlin became the first federated state to apply the call " brake on the rental price ", a law passed by the Bundestag and which was intended to curb the increase in rental prices and increasing real estate speculation.
Paris: limits in 80 neighborhoods
With the sale price of housing already exceeding 10,000 euros per square meter, buying a flat is a chimera for many of the residents of Paris. In fact, 60% of Parisians rent as the only possible alternative. But neither does this option come cheap in a city with a strong lack of housing due, in part, to the limited existing space to build more "intramural" houses. In a decade, rents in the French capital rose to 50%, which led the government of the socialist François Hollande to pass a law in 2014 that allowed the limitation of rents in "tense" areas - where there is much more demand what offer, what triggers prices - of big crowds like Paris or Lille. The justice, however, stopped the law in 2017, which according to some studies, shot prices again by up to 25%.
A new regulation, the so-called Elan law, has once again "experimentally" enabled the rent limit. Paris, which applied it between 2015 and 2017, implements it again from July 1, 2019 - for a period of four years - and Lille will start doing it on March 1. The limitation of the rent, in the areas where it is applicable, applies to the lease agreements - new or renewed - of a main dwelling. Only so-called social housing are excluded, since they already benefit from special prices. By law, the rent cannot exceed more than 20% of a reference price set each year by decree based on a series of criteria (such as neighborhood, number of rooms of the house and year of construction of the same), nor be 30% lower than that figure. According to the Paris City Hall, in the capital these limited rentals are already applied in 80 neighborhoods regrouped in 14 geographical sectors.
Fines for owners who violate the rental limits range from 5,000 euros for natural persons to 15,000 if it is a legal person. In addition, the prefect can sue the landlord to return the most collected money to the lessee.
California: 5% annual plus inflation, with many exceptions
The housing crisis in California has led the governor to declare an informal "state of emergency" to address its most visible effects: tens of thousands of homeless people roaming the streets of big cities and living in cars and vans . The first true measure of draft was the AB1482 law, passed last year and which represents a timid control of the unbridled rise in rents. The law limits rent increases to 5% per year plus inflation and sets the causes for the eviction of a tenant. It is not exactly a limit to the rental price, but rather a stabilization law to avoid excesses. The law leaves exempt buildings with more than 15 years old and houses whose owner is a private individual, not a company. It is estimated to affect about eight million Californians.
Under the previous law, there was no limit to what an owner could raise the rent. If the increase was less than 10%, it was enough to notify 30 days in advance. If it was greater than 10%, I had to notify with 60 days. In some specific areas and buildings, municipalities could impose a rent control that limited the rise to 5% and established a series of "just causes" for eviction. What the new state law has done is basically extend those protections to the entire state.
The new law came into force this year and expires in a decade. However, its approval had an unwanted effect: it was approved last September and ratified in October, more than enough time to order the eviction within 60 legal days. The owners who were going to be affected began evicting tenants to make new contracts with the maximum rental price possible before the law entered into force. Given the possibility that a law designed to "stabilize the market", cities like Los Angeles issued ordinances to prohibit evictions without just cause.
None of these rules to curb the symptoms of the crisis solves the main factor that is strangling the middle class, which is the lack of new housing. The builders are faced with stubborn opposition from the municipalities to yield land to build apartments, not even near large work or transport centers, because the neighbors consider that it affects the traditional bungalow neighborhoods and harms the value of their houses. Thus there are regions such as Los Angeles in which, with 10 million inhabitants, the most common landscape is that of only one family per plot. In a state with 39 million inhabitants, the size of Spain and the GDP of the United Kingdom, there is no place for anyone.
