(((A week ago, two young people knocked on the door of my house. My wife answered them. She initially thought they were from some mobile or electricity company. They identified themselves as being from a Valencian real estate company and asked if we wanted to sell our home. They knocked on all the doors of my building)))
I don't know if the same thing happens to you when you walk around where you live, but I notice that my city, Valencia, is less and less of a city and seems more like a product, is it? A space where the citizen has less and less prominence and where companies, investors, those who are making a profit using my city as a business increasingly have it. I said it in another article, I know less and less about Valencia, particularly when I walk through the center, which has already become a theme park for tourists, with the same franchises as in any European capital and with hardly any traditional businesses left. I feel like a stranger. But this reality is spreading to all neighborhoods, where those who arrive with trolley suitcases that they drag along the sidewalks in search of a temporary stay apartment, also on ground floors, grow.
I have read both of Jorge Dioni's books and he is right. Also in reference to the importance of intervention by political power, surpassed by a phenomenon that exceeds the local level, because it is a global phenomenon. Cities are commodities and they are profitable if you know how to operate in them. The alarms do not stop ringing, as the UPV Housing Observatory Chair warned this week in a new report: the average rental price in Valencia is 1,600 euros per month. Yes, you read correctly. And the new Housing Law of the Government of Pedro Sánchez is having the opposite effect to that sought; There is a fear of putting apartments for long-term rentals (I know of several cases) and they only opt for short stays, shared apartments, which are more profitable and less problematic for renewing tenants. The low supply of this rental model causes the price to rise, causing gentrification and, furthermore, forcing young people, and not so young people, to live in shared apartments.
Valencia is a product and the previous left-wing administration did nothing effective to prevent it. Former mayor Joan Ribó says that he did not see it coming. The current mayor, María José Catalá, announces measures, but it will be difficult to fight against a model that is spreading and in which many win, even if many others lose. The Generalitat Valenciana, for its part, announces 10,000 officially protected homes in the Valencian Community. I think the objective is good, as well as the strategy (with the complicity of the city councils), but I fear that it will come too late for many people, while investors continue taking over buildings and entire streets because to make money there must be rotation, that It's big business. Building to sell is an old activity, from when it was possible to get a mortgage and be able to live on the same salary. Now the apartments are transit, like the city. Valencians observe the phenomenon between resignation and the desire to go into exile, especially those who still live in the central neighborhoods. In the PAI of Patraix, a large part of the apartments sold have been to investors and subsequently rented; They have been paid in cash.
Sometimes I think that my entire city is for sale, even those of us who own apartments and believe we are rooted in it, are for sale. Because we are also part of the product. Our activity adds value to València to the extent that we are the ones who pay the taxes, those who care for it and maintain it, those of us who love it, those of us who stay when others leave to continue giving life to each of its corners. We want to be on the map, to talk about our attractions, which are enormous; I am one of those who believe that tourism is good, but there are days when it seems that we are crossing many red lines, and we will regret it. It has already happened in other geographies. Let's be prepared.
