The new housing law that Congress expects to approve today lengthens and makes more expensive the procedures to regain possession of a home in cases of occupation or non-payment of rent or a mortgage, so that the average term will exceed every two years and will be considerably large for large owners.

According to the legal services of API Catalunya, the average term to evict an occupant was 9.6 months at the end of 2021, with only four months for individuals who have suffered the occupation of a habitual residence, but more than a year when the owner of the property is a company. This term, according to CGPJ data, had already doubled since 2018, when it was 4.9 months, but was extended again in 2022, with the moratorium on evictions ending on June 30. The requirements of the new law will again increase the deadlines.

Spokesmen for the Ministry of Transport rejected this interpretation yesterday. According to his opinion, “the new law will not affect illegal occupations that are processed by criminal means, since it does not modify the Criminal Procedure Law and has express eviction procedures”. In addition, they pointed out, the new mediation procedure “does not affect small owners, only large ones whose homes are inhabited by vulnerable people”.

According to Lucía Delgado, spokesperson for the Mortgage Affected Platform (PAH), “with the new law, vulnerable families will continue to be able to be evicted from their homes. The law will simply prolong the procedures”. According to the PAH, the law should oblige large landlords to offer social rent to those families, as the Catalan law does.

According to the Platform for Those Affected by Employment (PAO), the new law “sinks” those affected by occupations or non-payment of rent. “Violation of domicile, or non-payment of rent have various causes”, and the law gives them all the same treatment. Owners “must face the non-payment of rent, supply costs, taxes and court costs”, and the law does not provide for aid to “reduce this damage”.

Carles Sala, spokesperson and legal head of API Catalunya, points out that the new rule will modify the Civil Procedure Law, which regulates the procedures to regain possession of a home. “Any owner who initiates legal proceedings must specify whether the property is the habitual residence of the person who occupies it and provide a certificate from the Property Registry that proves whether or not he is a large owner. If he does not do so, the claim will not be at least not accepted for processing”.

If the owner of the property is an individual and the property has become the habitual residence of its occupants (because more than 72 hours have passed since they entered it or because they resided in it and have stopped paying the rent ), the law imposes on the judge the obligation to inform them that they can request help from the social services and to also communicate to the administrations the existence of that procedure so that they can certify whether they are vulnerable families. If the administrations consider that they are, the procedure will be suspended for two months, to give them time to provide them with aid or an alternative home. If the owner is a legal company, even if it has only one property, the suspension will be four months.

Montserrat Junyent, president of Fadei, regrets that “social services are collapsed, so they certify the vulnerable situation of the occupants without making rigorous checks”. That is why he believes that in practice the vast majority of procedures will suffer the suspension.

The difficulties and deadlines for regaining possession of the home will be greater when it is from a large holder, who will have to go to mediation, which will “delay the recovery of possession of a home for much more than two years”, according to José Ramón Zurdo, director of the Rent Negotiating Agency.