Yolanda Díaz closes ranks to freeze the price of all rentals by law. In other words, the second vice president is committed to going beyond the limit of 2% of the increases in current leases, an agreement reached with EH Bildu in the 2023 budgets, and establishing an extension of the contracts once they end in the new anti-inflation decree to be approved before the end of this month. The leader of the Unidas Podemos space affirms that the problems to be able to pay a rent is "one of the greatest factors of inequality" at this time.
Díaz met this Friday with heads of the tenants' union, the llogateres union and the platform for those affected by the mortgage (PAH) and endorsed their demands. "We agree with the tenants' union and with the PAH that the right to housing is fundamental and must be treated as such," he stated at a press conference at the headquarters of the Ministry of Labor the day the employment data for November. "When the term of a rental contract ends, renewal is impossible," he defended. He has pointed out that the revaluation of some leases reaches 30 or 40%, mainly in large cities.
The second vice president has lashed out at the "winners" of this crisis. She has cited the "investment funds classified as large holders" of housing and has asked them to "take responsibility" for the situation of families who cannot pay their rent. She has also mentioned the banks, which, according to Díaz, are “profiting, and the large distribution chains.
“I go down the street, people stop me and tell me that they have been made permanent and that is very good, but they also stop me because they cannot pay the rent. It is urgent to unblock the Housing Law, it is our obligation”, Díaz added in relation to a norm stranded in the Congress of Deputies.
Díaz has spoken in favor of prohibiting evictions without a housing alternative and, in this sense, has indicated that "the big holders" have to take responsibility for offering this alternative to families. "A person with five properties can have the ability to influence the housing market? I think so", defended the second vice president, who has also defended that there is "distortion in the housing market due to how they are operating", these legal persons.
It must be remembered that during the pandemic the Government already prohibited evictions without a housing alternative and approved a royal decree to allow affected owners economic compensation in certain cases.
"Citizens are not in elections, they are in reaching the end of the month, having a job or paying a fair rent," Díaz concluded, something that, as he has stated, . The Social Rights Minister, Ione Belarra, and the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, were invited to the meeting with the housing social movements. They have not been able to attend for personal reasons.
