Eleven PSOE mayors have agreed on a reform of the regional land law, that they will take to the Madrid Assembly in December, with the aim of trying to make the declaration of stressed residential market area depends on the municipalities and not on the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who until now has vetoed all requests in the region. The text, which is expected to be rejected by the absolute majority of the PP, proposes that this measure be maintained for a minimum of three years, extendable from then on year to year, as in state law. However, it is committed to defining what a large homeowner is on a case-by-case basis, while in the national standard the owners of housing are understood as such. 10 properties, or five if they are in stressed areas. Furthermore, it explains that the land obtained through the capital gains generated by urban planning “must necessarily be used for the construction and management of social or public housing” in the municipalities in which this declaration has been approved.
The declaration of a stressed residential market area requires that families have to spend more than 30% of their income on rent or mortgage payments (including expenses on supplies); or that the purchase or rental price has risen at least three points above the CPI in the last five years in the corresponding autonomous community.
Its activation allows town councils to establish restrictions on rent increases and limit the income of large property owners to what is set by the Reference Price Index. And the municipalities that propose the reform of the land law want that decision not to pass through the Community of Madrid, as is happening now, since the Ayuso Executive has so far rejected the requests from Getafe, Alcorcón or Fuenlabradamunicipalities all of them governed by the PSOE.
Although it is foreseeable that the initiative will not go ahead, since the PP enjoys an absolute majority in the regional Parliament, the socialists hope that their proposal will serve to force debate in the Chamber, and thus portray that the conservatives reject limiting rents. That caused last week an initial agreement between nine mayors —those from Alcorcón, Fuenlabrada, Getafe, Parla, Mejorada del Campo, Velilla de San Antonio, Ciempozuelos, Coslada and San Fernando de Henares—, who are now joined by two more —Pinilla del Valle and San Martín de la Vega—, to a total of 11 councilors whose decisions affect almost a million Madrid residents.
“The administrations are obliged to act with the aim of making effective people’s right to housing,” summarizes the mayor of Fuenlabrada, Javier Ayala. “At the present time that means being able to use the legal tools that we have at our disposal, such as the law that allows us to declare areas as especially stressed and, consequently, gives us the possibility of intervening in the market to, for example, control rental prices,” he continues.
“What we are asking for is to have the possibility of being able to use this law without the veto of the Community of Madrid, all administrations working in a coordinated manner with a single objective: to make housing affordable for everyone, but especially for the young people.”
For a legislative initiative of this type to be carried out in the Madrid Assembly, it must be subscribed by an absolute majority of the municipal plenary sessions of at least three or more town councils that have a census of more than 50,000 voters, according to the law. 6/1986 of popular legislative initiative. Consequently, the mayor of Alcorcón, Candelaria Testa, had been in talks since March with her socialist counterparts to bring to fruition an operation endorsed by the regional secretary general, Juan Lobato. It is expected that these votes will take place throughout November so that the proposal to reform the land law reaches the Assembly in December.
The joint strategy, recalls a PSOE interlocutor, includes that the socialist group in the regional Parliament has demanded that public housing cannot go on the free marketin line with the campaign orchestrated from the federal headquarters of Ferraz for all of Spain.
A year ago, Madrid was the second province with the most stressed postal codes (179), after Barcelona, according to an analysis by Atlas Real State published by this newspaper. And, although in the Community of Madrid there are 33 municipalities that would meet the requirements to cap prices, according to an analysis by Idealisticthe Executive of Ayuso continues to refuse to allow any statement in this sense.
“We do not believe in the declaration of stressed areas, because it attacks the right to property, invades competencies and are initiatives that raise prices and lower supply,” the spokespersons for the regional government have been explaining. which has been appealed before the Constitutional Court the law, whose provision on rent caps has been applied for the first time in Catalonia.
In that region, price regulation has reduced rents, but the number of contracts has plummeted: they fell sharply after the regulation came into force last March. Thus, in the 140 municipalities declared a tense residential market, where the price is capped, fell by 17.2% (24,543 new contracts), according to data the Generalitat published on October 8.
