The Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced that his Executive will give the green light to the construction of 20,000 new public houses on land owned by the Ministry of Defense through the public company SEPES. “These 20,000 new public and affordable rental homes will join the 50,000 SAREB flats and the 43,000 public homes that we will finance through the ICO. In total: 113,000 more homes. For our youth. For families who cannot afford a flat or rent”, explained the president during his speech in the Senate.
“We are going to launch the largest promotion of public housing and affordable rental in recent decades,” said Sánchez, who specified that, taking into account the homes already projected by the Ministry of Transportation, “in the coming years we will enable 183,000 publicly owned housing for rent”.
The president, during his first turn to speak face to face with Feijóo this Tuesday, has compared the initiative of his Executive with the legacy received from the PP governments. “There are 183,000 homes compared to the 1,600 that the PP projected during its years of neoliberal government. We multiply by 115 the action of our predecessors. It is an ambitious endeavor, we know, but what are we going to achieve. Actually, what is really surprising, because it is outrageous, is to promote only two houses every three days as the neoliberal government of the PP did. Not even a house every day of government. This is as far as his commitment to the right to housing for Spaniards came, ”he criticized.
Sánchez has quantified “in more than 50%” the number of publicly owned homes or promoted by the general administration of the State in Spain after the increase committed in the next five years. “Our goal is clear: reach the European average of 9% of the public housing stock as soon as possible and continue advancing towards the 20% registered by the most advanced countries in Europe in this area.”
Third housing ad
In recent weeks, the Government and the PSOE have turned their commitment to housing policy into a campaign banner for May 28. After a year and a half paralyzed in Congress, the Executive of Pedro Sánchez managed two weeks ago to finally tie an agreement with his parliamentary partners to unblock the housing law that, among other measures, will limit the rise in real estate prices in rent.
In addition, the President of the Government himself announced his commitment to provide 100,000 public homes for affordable rentals, 48,000 of them from Sareb, a historic demand by progressive forces. With this bet, the Socialists intend to capture two antagonistic and conflicting models with respect to Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s bet to return to liberalize land to build more.
“The miracle of loaves and flats”
The reaction of the PP has come on the fly. In his first turn of reply, the leader of the right, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has reproached Sánchez for his announcements on housing. “He does not make housing, nor is he going to do it”, he pointed out, since, he added, they are “the competence of autonomous communities and town halls”.
“I am not going to submit him to the test of the truth” about the announcements that the Government has made in recent days regarding housing. “It is the miracle of the breads and the floors”, Feijóo has ironized. “Added all together, he says there are 113,000, the same as Ábalos said when he was minister,” he concluded.
Source: www.eldiario.es
