The Basque Parliament rejects the EH Bildu law to promote social rent

Euskaraz irakurri: Alokairu soziala sustatzeko EH Bilduren lege-proposamena atzera bota du Legebiltzarrak

The Basque parliament on Thursday rejected the consideration of EH Bildu’s bill, declaring that in urban planning 50% of the Official Protection Housing is reserved for social rent (VPO) to build a measure through which it wanted to promote this form of rental, including private promotions.

In February, the Basque Governing Council already expressed its unfavorable criteria for considering this bill. According to the housing law, all VPO homes promoted by the administration must be for rent, but according to EH Bildu, many municipalities are evading this mandate by selling land to private developers so that they can build and sell the houses.

In that sense, and in order to give social rent a boost, EH Bildu suggested changing the land law to introduce an obligation in urban planning to rent out at least half of the officially protected housing. However, the proposal was rejected by all political groups except EH Bildu and Elkarrekin Podemos-IU.

The PNV parliamentarian Irune Berasaluze He has defended that “for allocating rental housing, other ways are already included in the housing plan, which are more suitable to respond to demand”. For example, he pointed out that EH Bildu’s proposal “is not viable” because “the property regime wants to be linked to different forms of transfer”. “It makes no sense that in order to assert one right, another is violated,” he noted.

The PES MP Mary Jesus Saint Joseph rejected the initiative because it believes it “restricts the rights of private property and the right to conduct business or the exercise of economic activities”. “There is already more than enough legal regulation so that the government services with powers in the field of housing can and must spend all available resources on housing and social housing policy,” he defended.

The parliamentarian of EH Bildu Unai Fernandez de Betono, for its part, has defended the need to “work before the houses are built so that they can be used for rental purposes”. In this sense, he recalls that “today 90% of applicants are asking for a rental property because they have difficulty accessing a mortgage”.

The parliamentarian of Elkarrekin Podemos-IU Inigo Martinez, for its part, has expressed its support for considering EH Bildu’s legal initiative. After stressing that social rent applicants represent more than 61,000 people in the Basque Country, he criticized the Basque government’s unfavorable criteria for the initiative, stressing that “the need for housing in the Basque Country has been recognised”.

The MP of PP+Cs Muriel Larrea He explained that his group has rejected the consideration of the EH Bildu bill because “it threatens three pillars: market freedom, private property and municipal freedom”. The representative of Vox, Amaia Martínez, did not participate in the debate.