Fabian Debesa
09/18/2020 - 11:35
Clarín.com
Politics
The Buenos Aires Legislature is advancing with a project to maintain until the end of the year the suspension of judicial evictions, but it leaves out of that restriction the takings of land such as those that are registered almost daily in Greater Buenos Aires.
In other words,
a judge will not be able to remove a tenant who has stopped paying from a property.
But it
will be able to order a "displacement" of occupants who settled in private properties
at some point during the quarantine.
The provincial Chamber of Deputies approved an initiative that, strictly speaking, is an extension of Law 15,172 promoted at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Voted in March as part of emergency situations, it set a clear limit to the possibility of leaving homeless people affected by the paralysis of the country and who could not afford rents, mortgage payments or UVA loans.
But in recent weeks the norm has been loaded with a different political component.
Social organizations and sectors that demand housing solutions for unprotected sectors relied on this provision to prevent evictions from properties taken in peripheral areas of the suburbs.
Even from the Juntos por el Cambio sector, which supported this idea in the incipient isolation stage, charged against the initiative to impute to the provincial government an alleged inclination to favor occupations.
This position of the opposition had other foundations.
The Government expressed opposing positions on addressing the problem of properties disposed of by force.
For example,
Minister Sabrina Frederic, considered that "it is not a security issue, it is a housing deficit
and pressure from the land market that obviously has to be alleviated with anticipated solutions."
His colleague from the Province,
Sergio Berni, crossed this position
: "The right to liberty, life and private property is not negotiated, they are not even questioned," said the Axel Kicillof official.
And she also recalled that these actions are a crime and depicted it: "Whoever sets foot on land that has an owner, goes to prison."
In parallel, through social networks, Berni reported that since the beginning of the year the police carried out 868 evictions and arrested 564 people involved in this crime.
Controversy rumbled in parliament and two weeks ago,
deputy Daniel Lipovetzky presented a bill to "clarify" the anti-eviction law.
Another legislator from Cambiemos, Alex Campbell tried to go further: he proposed taking social benefits from those who participate in these acts.
Both entered to be treated on tables and the majority of the Frente de Todos prevented it.
Now, the majority banks agreed to this modification.
“There was a need to specify the scope of the law and that the suspension of foreclosures be only for very particular situations, such as the case of people affected with mortgage loans or UVA loans.
This article specifies that all usurpations and also collective land seizures are excluded.
It is clear: the judges have the necessary tools to produce evictions in the face of a situation of illegal usurpation, "Deputy Lipovetsky explained to Clarín.
There was endorsement by the Frente de Todos and the regulations were voted almost unanimously.
Only the FIT bloc (left) did not raise its hand to give its approval.
It will go to the Senate that would treat it on October 10.
The "search for displacement" as it is known in legal language to the forced vacating of usurped properties has its own protocol.
It is an instruction issued by the Buenos Aires Supreme Court of Justice in mid-2019. It includes at least six mandatory procedures for prosecutors and judges before restoring real estate to those affected owners, including the State.
This guideline of the Court, plus the suspension voted in March (and that expires on September 30) put the Justice in a virtual paralysis when acting before the episodes that - according to data from the Ministry of Security - are repeated on average six times a week at the GBA.
The only way to carry out an eviction action was if the police force or a prosecutor detected the crime in flagrante delicto.
However, the file on one of the emblematic cases of usurpation managed to advance in the Courts.
And the Justice set a date for the eviction: it is the property located in the Numancia / San Martín neighborhood of Guernica, in the south of the suburbs.
There are almost 2,500 people settled there and Judge Martín Rizzo ordered that between September 23 and 25, the "search for displacement" be ordered.
The prosecutor Juan Cruz Condomí Alcorta may use public force for the operation, but he must do so "trying to cause the least possible damage."
There are just over 100 hectares that began to be "subdivided" on July 24.
According to what they say in the municipality of Presidente Perón - to which Guernica belongs - "they brought families from other districts."
In the commune they believe that there was logistics and organization to support the "landing" in that open space and that it belongs to a company.
Another file ordered by Condomí Alcorta determined that plots were sold for between 30 thousand and 50 thousand pesos.
And he ordered the arrest of two people who would be part of an organization dedicated to scamming desperate people to get a piece of land to live on.
PDL