The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and the deputy mayor Maria Eugenia Gay, during the joint commission with the Generalitat in October in which housing policies were protagonists. Albert Garcia
The government of the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni (PSC), and the municipal group of the commons, led by his predecessor, Ada Colau, staged a tough and unprecedented confrontation this Tuesday regarding the management of the housing crisis in Barcelona .
It was during the Social Rights commission of the City Council.
The deputy mayor of the area, from which housing hangs, Maria Eugènia Gay, showed her “absolute perplexity at the situation left [the commons]: alarming, dramatic and a real failure,” she said.
“Young people have been expelled from Barcelona, rent has gone up, the housing emergency has collapsed.
"Housing is not defended by the owner," he accused and listed figures such as the 682 families waiting at the emergency apartment table, which takes between two and up to four years to allocate apartments, depending on the size of the families.
The hardness of the socialists surprised the commoners, who remembered that in the last two terms they governed together.
It remains to be seen if Gay's words erode the conversations that Collboni and Colau are having to put together an eventual left-wing government.
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Waiting for the regulation of rental prices in Catalonia
The commons had requested the appearance of the deputy mayor Gay to give explanations of what they have been denouncing for days as "a change of criteria" in the management of evictions, with the case of the neighbor Blanca, in the Gòtic, which ended on the street after years of mediation between the council and the property.
After a long intervention read, the person in charge of Social Rights assured that “there has not been any change in criteria.”
And after the groups' responses, she insisted: "We must rethink the model, promote autonomy plans, promoting information on the vulnerable and not storing it in any way," continued the government member, who ended by stating that " accompany people beyond the day they leave their home.”
The councilor of the commons Carolina Recio responded to Gay that during the terms in which they governed, “housing policies were at the center” and assured that both her party and the social movements of the city “smell” that there has been a change of criteria, specifically “political criteria” and reproached that “it remains unclear what happened in Blanca's case.”
And after Gay's final intervention, she responded: “I am surprised by the tone of her response.
80,000 people have been able to stay in their rentals, nine out of ten evictions have been stopped, we have preserved the social function of housing... Blanca is away from home, we have not been responded to, she has given a technical response to a situation that requires political will.
I remind you that we shared a government.”
Government and commons were also the subject of criticism from the rest of the opposition.
On behalf of Junts, councilor Neus Munté also criticized eviction figures or increases in rent prices for commoners, in whom she saw “political tactics” in demanding Gay's appearance.
“We have heard day in and day out that policies are at the center, but the figures are stubborn and the situation is not improving,” said Ella Munté.
She only acknowledged to Colau that in his two mandates the Government shared with the opposition “to act responsibly, very extreme situations” in which he was working.
Eva Baró, from ERC, demanded that in cases like Blanca's "there be a clear procedure."
“The eviction had been stopped several times, the administration has failed in the last six years, since it was first saved,” she said.
The PP also called the policies of the City Council and the Generalitat a “failure.”
Unknowns about the price index that will regulate rent
Beyond the City Council, in relation to housing this Tuesday there were also statements about the rental price index prepared by the Ministry of Housing, committed to having it ready this February.
The application of price regulation in 140 municipalities in Catalonia will depend on the index that ends up being approved.
In this sense, the Tenants Union warned that "the PSOE proposes an index that has a range of prices, not a fixed price, with the risk that the highest price will be applied," in the words of the organization's spokesperson, Enric Aragonès.
“We have known that it is an index with very high prices, it has consequences on regulation, which should serve to lower prices, it would be limited to freezing.
It cannot be that the reference is prices of the highest bubble that the rental price has ever had, we cannot normalize these prices that lead many people to allocate half of their income to pay for housing," Aragonès stated, demanding "that the regulation lower prices.”
According to the Housing Law, no new contract can exceed the price of the previous contract, and in the case of large holders, the price must adjust to the index, even if it means a drop in price.
The pressure from the Union adds to the words last week of the Minister of Territory, Ester Capella, responsible for housing, who in Parliament already warned of the “range of prices.”
“If the range is very open, the high range can be applied and prevent prices from falling.”
Capella explained that they are trying to demonstrate this to the Ministry “with a sampling of 32,000 contracts, to show that if the range is wide, income containment will never be a reality.”
The Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, assured after the Council of Ministers that her ministry is being inspired “by the index that Catalonia had” when it regulated prices between 2020 and 2022. “I wish that the rest of the communities where there are stressed market areas "have the predisposition to apply the Law to contain prices."
Rodríguez revealed that City Councils of communities that do not want to apply the regulation or have even appealed against it are asking their regional governments to be able to regulate rents.
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