If the PP governs after the general elections at the end of the year, the Executive will give young Spaniards with a certain income an "emancipation aid" of 1,000 euros to help them cover the initial expenses of buying or renting their first home.
The aid would be given in a single payment – that is, once – and not to all young people, but only to those who do not reach a certain level of income, a limit that the popular will announce this Wednesday.
It is the promise that the leader of the popular, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, launched this Tuesday during the presentation of his housing plan, which also includes an advanced measure already on Monday —the guarantee of 15% assumed by the State to help the young people to pay the entrance of the house- and that will not be for the moment of obligatory compliance in the autonomous communities governed by the PP.
popular barons
and within the framework of the program for the next regional and municipal elections on May 28, so from the national leadership they understand that the regional Executives of the PP will put it into practice even before Feijóo arrived at La Moncloa.
On the terrace of a central Madrid hotel, overlooking the Puerta de Sol,
home
of the regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Feijóo has presented his formula against the drama that many young people experience to face the cost of housing.
Almost at the same time, the Council of Ministers gave the go-ahead to the housing bill agreed with ERC and Bildu, which the popular leader has harshly criticized.
“Housing policies are State policies, and if the independentistas want to make State policies, welcome.
But State policies are never the policies of the independentistas.
This situation cannot be fixed with repeated promises and by intervening in prices, nor with improvised election campaign promises," Feijóo said of the agreement reached on Friday between the coalition government and its partners, which includes a cap on the increase in oil prices. rent.
Flanked by the president and the general secretary of the New Generations of Madrid, Ignacio Dancausa and Paula Tundidor, the leader of the PP has proposed a State pact on housing that includes the central Administration, the autonomous communities and the town halls.
A good part of the powers in this matter are ceded to the autonomous governments, and those governed by the PP have already expressed their resistance to applying the norm approved this Tuesday by La Moncloa.
Nor does the national leadership of the party clarify whether its plan should be understood as a guideline by the popular regional presidents: “It is a proposal by Feijóo.
Let whoever wants to copy it and as soon as possible ”, sources from the training executive have limited themselves to saying.
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Feijóo proposes that the State guarantee young people 15% of the purchase of their first home
Regarding the aid of 1,000 euros, the direction of the PP explains that this check intends to undertake the "objective expenses" that young people have to face, both in the rental and in the purchase of a property: acquisition of furniture, payment bail or tax.
“When you start, everything is expenses.
Better that [1,000 euros] than nothing ”, these sources emphasize.
And they add that the star measure of the plan is not that but the guarantee of 15%.
The popular ones propose in turn to increase the endowments of public land to build housing and assign them with an appraised rental price 40% lower than the market.
In addition to explaining the measures that the PP intends to promote to tackle the high prices, Feijóo has once again pointed out squatting as one of the main problems that hinders the right to housing.
“That a young person has to pay and make an effort with his rent and his salary, and yet there are other people who illegally occupy a house, and who do not pay anyone anything and nobody can throw them out of someone else's house, is an act of injustice and inequity that we have to reverse”, he said, to the applause of the fifty young people who attended the talk.
The statistics do not support, however, this alarmist discourse on the illegal occupation of houses.
The number of burglaries and property usurpations registered in Spain in 2022 was 16,726, 3.2% less than the previous year —when this figure had reached 17,274, an all-time high—, according to the data collected by the System Crime Statistician, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior and which compiles information from the National Police, the Civil Guard, the regional police and municipal bodies.
Of this total number of infractions, the type of squatting, the one that has the most media resonance and the one that Feijóo has referred to, has a residual incidence: the Prosecutor's Office specifies that in 2021 indictments were filed in 83 proceedings for this crime.
The PP's opposition to the future Housing Law has been transferred to the government control session in the Senate this afternoon.
The spokesman for the popular in the upper house, Javier Maroto, has described it as a "tease", and the first vice president, Nadia Calviño, has replied, stressing that this is the first housing law of democracy and that it is conceived "to protect tenants and give legal certainty to owners."
Calviño has made ugly the policy exercised by Núñez Feijóo when he presided over the Xunta de Galicia: "He built 3,000 homes in a decade, compared to 27,000 in the previous decade," she said.
"There are two models: the one that defends the general interest (...) and the one that talks about cuts and precariousness."
“Evictions in 24 hours”
The PP wants to dedicate itself especially to young people in the 28-M campaign because it has detected with concern how many of its younger voters are migrating to Vox.
And squatting is precisely one of the central themes of the discourse of the ultra formation led by Santiago Abascal.
“We will guarantee the eviction of illegal squats within 24 hours.
We will approve crimes of squatting to replace the home at the disposal of the owner.
If your income is vulnerable, we will help you, but illegal acts cannot be carried out in Spain without having any type of repercussion", Feijóo has sentenced, who has affirmed that 50 squats are registered a day in Spain.
According to the Interior data, there are 45 per day, but the vast majority are not squats but burglaries (in which eviction is much more automatic).