Housing: from a social right to a speculative investment element.

Housing: from a social right to a speculative investment element.
 
x Nekane Jury: The only unsustainable thing is capitalism that makes a democratic development of society impossible, creating a growing exclusion.

“Gure amaren etxea defendatuko dugu”
Defend gure sutondoa, our lar, llar, home, meanings already lost, but that survive in the collective subconscious, transporting us to the roots of our social identity. The home is the shared economic and social space, where all social knowledge and skills are transferred. It is the place where the community stands, local history and its myth acquire continuity, where popular culture flows in generational overlap.

The role that housing has played (and from which neoliberalism is disposing of us) extends to all our identity collection, it is
multidimensional, so to analyze its current situation only from the economic angle, it diverts our attention from the neoliberal design of the last decades, which from all levels (in which housing is one) is leading us towards individualism, towards abandonment of shared public space, lived, when not towards exclusion.

From an integrative social analysis, the current housing problem must be taken as a broader problem of social lack of cohesion. You cannot talk about economic convergence, between different age groups, gender, or geographical spaces, without talking about social convergence, in which a real convergence in terms of accessibility to the use of a home is key (it does not have to be in property ), but this accessibility must be integrated into broader policies whose final objective is that of the interaction of the social fabric (against individualism).

From the origins of the workers' struggle for the consecuención of basic social rights, the right to the ceiling, as to health or education has been a fundamental right. In its social genesis we recall Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Social and Economic Rights, which says that everyone has the right to housing. All countries that join this Declaration are obliged to collect these rights in their respective Constitutions.

Within the framework of the economic crisis of the 1970s, this social right begins to be attacked to transform it into an economic market element with some protection, gradually abandoning the concept of “social good”. After the triumph of liberalism and the dismantling of social rights that led to the application of the Maastricht Treaty (1993), housing, in a qualitative leap, goes from being an economic element to being a speculative element. At the gates of 2020 the speculation with the right to the ceiling has reached an unsuspected level, through the SOCIMI and the “vulture funds”, some of which focus almost exclusively on this “business” sector.

How did you get here ?: With the commodification of all basic rights and needs, left to the free will of the market, and with the protection of all EU governments from that "free market", actively benefiting from its laws and tax exemptions and passively abandoning budget investment at the hands of the market to people in need of housing.



Shelters aren't the answer to homelessness 

Summarizing the path traveled to reach the Vulture Funds has been:

1 Check out the rent, get rid of the social housing stock (years 1980-90) and push people to the property.
2 A massive and uncontrolled indebtedness to access the property (years 1990-2008)
3 An unresolved economic crisis that has led to a general decline in real wages and precariousness with a massive execution of evictions.
4 The new homes that are being formed, mainly composed of young people and divorced people, subject to this precariousness and seeing that they cannot access a mortgage first and secondly becoming aware that the property belongs to the bank until the last installment is paid, and therefore the eviction is a terrible reality, they have opted massively for rent.
5 The large Investment Funds have seen this reality and are taking over the housing market to take advantage of rent benefits. Political and institutional corruption increases the possibilities of its benefit.

1st THE RENT DESPROTEGIDO
To sum up a lot, we can mark the legislative milestones of lack of protection of housing law, which in turn directed the market in only one direction: speculation with a basic need.


In Euskal Herria and Spain of cement and brick, so linked to corruption, after industrial reconversions there is a clear commitment to the construction sector as a tractor of the economy, for this you have to boost ownership, this is achieved regulating against the rent and with a great propaganda of the bank tending towards the massive indebtedness

The PSOE in Royal Decree-Law 2/1985 on economic policy measures introduced the first large package of liberalizing measures in the field of rent. This Law not only eliminated any public intervention on future contracts, which became like any other commercial contract, but also marked the way in which income and contracts prior to this date would gradually be updated; Thus, he proposed a gradual system of review of the old income, protected by the Urban Leases Act (LAU) of 1964.

But it would be necessary to wait until the new Law of Urban Leases, Law 29/1994, also of the PSOE, to totally liberalize the sector.

In this situation, the rental market has reached average monthly incomes well above the Minimum Interprofessional Salary (SMI). In 2008, prior to the bubble prick, the average rental in the Basque Country was 968.9 euros per month, when the SMI was € 700. The crisis adjusted the market slightly, its lowest price was in 2013 with an average monthly income of € 825.4. As of this moment the ascent began, and from 2016 to 2019 the rise exceeds 19%.

In the first quarter of 20191, the average rental offered in the Basque Country amounts to 1047.7 euros per month (the SMI is € 900). The fork between tools is wide, the average monthly rent in Araba is € 882.1, in Bizkaia € 967.3 and in Gipuzkoa € 1,257.2.

The serious thing is that the rental of VPO on the same date reaches an average of 482.9 euros in monthly income, which is 53.65% of the monthly SMI.

The situation in Spain (and in Euskal Herria is the same) in relation to social housing is very far from the surrounding countries. The level of social rent in Spain barely reaches 2.5%, compared to 17% in countries such as France and the United Kingdom or almost 30% in the Netherlands2.

Given these data and the limited public protection for rent, it is logical that those in need of housing have chosen to try to access the property, from which low income and also average income are expelled.

In this sense, it should be noted that neither the Basque Executive, nor that of Madrid, are creating public housing, on the contrary they allow Bankia - public concessionaire - to be detaching itself from thousands of homes that it is selling to vulture funds; as well as KUTXABANK, the “Basque public bank” as they wanted to sell us, has transferred most of their mortgaged properties to another Vulture Investment Fund in which Kutxabank itself has a stake.

2nd THE MORTGAGE MIRROR.
Unprotected the rent by the Public Sector, the bank promoted massive indebtedness in a round business, the bank or its investees were the holders of the land and construction companies, and with 35-year loans they ended up charging 70% more of the initial value of the home and todonesto without risking anything, in case of default they executed the mortgage.

The tax legislation favored this game, taxing the property of the house and not the rent (this was not taxed until 2006), also removed the interest from the Tax Base. With which the debt was subsidized among all taxpayers to exclusively benefit the bank, which sells its "product" more attractive.

Junk mortgages, are the name given to mortgages granted to people with very little income and job insecurity, who faced with the severe economic adjustment of the crisis (massive unemployment, lower wages, greater precariousness) have seen not only as they lost their home, but also as they continue to owe money to the bank for a property they no longer have.

Since 1988 the existence of statistics begins, and until 2003 the price of housing in the Basque Country has increased 1,550.87%. With what we can say that it was the highest increase in the entire OECD.

Although the price has fallen considerably with the crisis, the pre-crisis speculation was so high that the historical series continues to mark a high price evolution in the last fifteen years. Between 2003 and April 2019, another 26.2% has increased, despite the adjustment of the crisis.

Full text at: https://www.lahaine.org/fO6L