Housing policy is at the center of the electoral confrontation

Prepared to turn access to housing into a "national cause", Pedro Sánchez assures that he has already placed this priority - one of the main concerns of Spaniards and, above all, of the youngest - at the center of the public debate of the electoral campaign of 28- M.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
08 May 2023 Monday 00:04
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Housing policy is at the center of the electoral confrontation

Prepared to turn access to housing into a "national cause", Pedro Sánchez assures that he has already placed this priority - one of the main concerns of Spaniards and, above all, of the youngest - at the center of the public debate of the electoral campaign of 28- M. "We will place decent and affordable housing at the center of our policies and of our governmental action", the head of the Spanish Executive insisted yesterday.

And after his successive announcements to increase the stock of public rental housing - with the aim of going from the current 3% to 9% of the European average, and up to 20% in the long term -, Sánchez advanced during a meeting in Tenerife that the Council of Ministers will approve tomorrow a line of guarantees from the ICO to cover up to 20% of the mortgage of young people under 35 and families with dependent minors, with an income of up to 37,800 euros per year.

"When the right talks about housing, it talks about land for speculation and a luxury good; we want to turn it into a constitutional right and a basic necessity", alleged the leader of the PSOE. "With the social democratic formula we demonstrate how all the old neoliberal dogmas fall one by one like dominoes", he celebrated.

In Moncloa, they warn that Sánchez is leading the housing initiative in the face of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who they see as "rebuffed" by his announcements. The leader of the PP already disqualified Sánchez's repeated announcements to build public housing as simple "electoral period ghosts", and suggested that he seal a State pact. Feijóo proposed an "aid for the emancipation" of young people, of 1,000 euros, and to guarantee 15% of the mortgage.

Sánchez's new announcement caused ambivalent reactions, even in the coalition Government. Minister Ione Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, criticized this new line of guarantees for the purchase of housing. As he denounced, "fostering the mortgage spiral will lead families into debt".

Regional presidents of the PP, such as the Andalusian Juanma Moreno Bonilla, the Castilian-Leonese Alfonso Fernández Mañueco or the Galician Alfonso Rueda, accused Sánchez of having "plagiarized" them. "Good time!", they cried.

The PP, in any case, will put to a vote in the plenary session of Congress this week a motion that includes the reprimand of Minister Raquel Sánchez, for her housing policy. In the motion, they again raise their alternatives, such as the State housing pact and the aid of 1,000 euros for emancipation.

The president of Aragon, the socialist Javier Lambán, announced, for his part, that he will supplement with an additional 15% the line of guarantees announced yesterday by Sánchez. In this way, assured Lambán, "the young people from Aragon will have a guarantee of 35% to acquire housing".