Maricarmen y el precio de la vivienda

Until a week ago, no one knew María del Carmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman who had lived for seventy years in a rented apartment near Retiro Park in Madrid. Her father signed the contract in the 1950s under the old rent control system, which allowed for indefinite extensions at virtually frozen prices. The contract passed to her mother and then to her, but a reform in the 1990s limited this final extension to two years, meaning it had been expired for almost two decades. After appealing to every court, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the landlords, and she was evicted last week. Her name immediately became a political rallying cry. On the day of the eviction, thousands of people gathered in front of the building; on Saturday, a large demonstration marched through the center of Madrid; and on Sunday, the Puerta del Sol was filled with tents, creating a scene deliberately reminiscent of the 15M movement. The protesters are demanding a decree from the Council of Ministers freezing rents, while Podemos is calling for the expropriation of hundreds of thousands of homes from what it calls vulture funds. But Maricarmen hasn't been a victim of any vulture fund, nor of the free market, but rather of its absence. The old rent control system was the longest-running rent control experiment in Spanish history, leaving behind an aging housing stock, buildings with no incentive to renovate, and a stunted rental market. What's being demanded today in Puerta del Sol is, essentially, an updated version of that Francoist rental system. But, putting Maricarmen's case aside, the discontent over housing prices is justified. Buying an apartment requires almost a decade's gross salary, prices are rising at rates not seen since before the crisis, and homeownership among those under 35 has plummeted to historic lows in just fifteen years. The main cause is the housing shortage. Each year, far more households are formed than are built. The accumulated housing deficit already exceeds half a million homes, and the population, nearing 50 million, is growing rapidly without any provision for housing. Faced with a shortage, any measure that reduces supply exacerbates the problem. Price caps don't create homes, legal uncertainty regarding squatting and squatting issues pushes many owners to leave their properties vacant, and restrictions on seasonal rentals don't return these homes to the regular rental market—quite the opposite, they remove them from the market. Tourist accommodation, the government's favorite scapegoat, represents only a tiny fraction of the total housing stock. Added to this are a tax system that penalizes buying and selling new construction, rigid and slow urban planning in a country with abundant land, and financial regulations that, since the 2008 crisis, have made it difficult to obtain loans for developers and cooperatives. Where obstacles have been removed, as in the Community of Madrid with the conversion of offices into housing or in the Balearic Islands with their strategic residential projects, the results have been swift. The solution lies not in forcibly distributing what is scarce, but in making it less scarce. This means freeing up land, streamlining procedures, simplifying regulations, reducing taxes, and restoring security for landlords. None of this requires seizing other people's property, only the political will to relinquish control of the housing market. The housing crisis is not a product of the market, but of intervention, and the price is paid by those whom it claims to protect. In The Counter-Reply: 0:00 Introduction 4:02 Maricarmen and the price of housing 33:51 What if Morocco invaded Ceuta and Melilla? 40:15 Vulture Funds 48:05 Social Housing in the Netherlands · Telegram Channel: https://t.me/lacontracronica · “Against Pessimism”… https://amzn.to/4m1RX2R · “Hispanics: A Brief History of Spanish-Speaking Peoples”… https://amzn.to/428js1G · “The Counter-History of Communism”… https://amzn.to/39QP2KE · “The Counter-History of Spain: Rise, Fall, and a New Beginning in 28 Episodes”… https://amzn.to/3kXcZ6i · “Against the French Revolution”… https://amzn.to/4aF0LpZ · “Luther, Calvin, and Trent: The Reformation That Never Was”… https://amzn.to/3shKOlK Support La Contra on: · Patreon... Patreon: diazvillanueva · iVoox... https://www.ivoox.com/podcast-contrac... · Paypal... https://www.paypal.me/diazvillanueva Follow me on: · Website... https://diazvillanueva.com · Twitter... Twitter: diazvillanueva · Facebook... Facebook: fernandodiazvillanueva1 · Instagram... Instagram: diazvillanueva · LinkedIn… LinkedIn: fernando-d%C3%ADaz-villanueva-7303865 #FernandoDiazVillanueva #maricarmen #housing