The housing crisis has returned to focus the political debate in the Balearic Islands. The president of the Government, Marga Prohens, said Tuesday in Parliament that her government is working to ensure decent housing for residents and called it a “social drama” that there are families living in caravans.
“That people have to live in a caravan is the worst face of the housing crisis. We can not normalize it, nor the settlements and substandard housing, three types of housing that proliferated with the left in the Govern”, said Prohens, in response to the deputy of Podemos Cristina Gomez, who recalled the demonstration last weekend in Palma in which several families in caravans protested the lack of access to affordable rent.
The scuffle has risen in tone when Gómez has accused Prohens of not using 526 houses of large forks that are closed, assuring that they could be destined to families in vulnerable situations. “He prefers to criminalize vulnerable families while the mayor of Palma, of the PP, imposes economic sanctions on caravans,” he has criticized.
Prohens has responded harshly: “I criminalize squatters and inquiokupas, not families. Your failed recipes will not come here with the PP Government. You the squatters, we the work”.
The price of rent and the debate on the tensioned zone
The PSIB spokesman, Iago Negueruela, has asked the president what solutions the Government proposes to the escalation of rental prices, which, he said, “are rising massively when contracts expire because their measures have not worked”.
Prohens has defended his housing shock plan, which includes the construction of 7,500 homes for residents, rents at a limited price and legal certainty for homeowners. He also stressed that Ibavi has begun the construction of 750 social rental housing units in the last year and a half and that 5,700 citizens have received aid for the purchase of their first home, with a total saving of 59 million euros.
“Our pulse will not tremble because the way to lower the price of rent is to put more housing on the market,” he assured.
Socialist deputy Mercedes Garrido has insisted that the Balearic Islands should take advantage of the state law to cap rents in stressed areas, since “the Balearic Islands is the community with the most expensive market and the most stressed in Spain”.
The Councilor for Housing, José Luis Mateo, has rejected the proposal and has blamed previous governments for the problem: “The price of housing rose for 8 years to record highs: the sale grew by 90% and rent by more than 80%”. He added that, in the last legislature, 92,000 tourist rental places were added, many of them illegal, without the left-wing Executive doing anything.
Mateo has accused Garrido of having authorized more than 3,000 homes on rustic land when she was councilor of Territory in Mallorca, and that, during the 8 years of leftist governments, almost half of all licenses to build on rustic land were approved since 2003, with 90% of what was built including a swimming pool.
The housing debate continues to be one of the most contentious issues in the Balearic Islands, where the lack of supply, tourist pressure and rising prices have led to an unprecedented housing crisis.
