Housing-related decree laws will be submitted this Thursday, 12 November, to their final vote in the Permanent Commission of the Congress, exactly one day after the general strike and on the eve of the official start of the election campaign, which will begin at zero hours on Friday 13.
As happens with any decree law, the rules are in force from the time they are published in the Official State Gazette (BOE), which in this case took place on 7 October. However, the Constitution requires that they be submitted for validation in Congress within a maximum period of thirty days.
With the Cortes dissolved due to the election advance, it is the Permanent Commission — the only parliamentary body that remains active after the dissolution — that assumes responsibility for deciding whether to keep or overturn the decree laws.
The date chosen to adopt this decision is this Thursday, 12 November. Along with the debate and vote on the decree laws, the appearance of the Third Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, is scheduled, who will detail the planning of the electricity grid up to 2030.
The Permanent Commission will have to meet again later to rule on other decree laws still pending a vote in Congress: one with measures for social and labor protection, another concerning aid to the victims of the railway accident in Urda (Toledo), and a third, approved this same Tuesday, to put in place specific support for single-parent families.
Two housing decree laws with different levels of support
In the case of housing, there are two differentiated decree laws: one sets out a broader package of actions to intervene in the market in response to the rise in prices, and the other modifies the previous one to require the landlord to pay compensation to the tenant if they decide to terminate the rental contract.
The Executive already tried to push these rules through at the beginning of October, but it ran into opposition from PP, Vox, Junts and UPN, forces that had a total of an absolute majority of 178 seats in both votes. In addition, the PNV and Coalición Canaria also opposed the decree that regulated financial compensation to the tenant.
The fall of those decrees triggered the scheduling of an early election for 29 November. After the dissolution of the Cortes, the Government chose to approve the texts again by introducing minor changes so that they would not be identical to the previous ones, with the difference that they are now submitted to the decision of the Diputación Permanente, where the Executive does have sufficient support to move forward at least with the decree on general measures.
This body is made up of 69 deputies. The left bloc controls 34, split among PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Bildu and Podemos, a formation that represents the entirety of the Grupo Mixto, as opposed to the 34 seats held by PP, Vox and Junts.
In this scenario, the decisive vote falls to the PNV, which has a representative in the Diputación. The Basque nationalists have already advanced that, just as they did before the early election, they will back the broader decree and position themselves against the second.
In this way, the decree that includes the ban on evictions, limits on the actions of 'vulture' funds in the purchase of housing, and tax bonifications for both homeowners and renters may move forward with 35 votes in favor and 34 against. The second decree, which regulates compensation for renters, does not have a sufficient majority to be ratified.
Loans of up to 50,000 euros and a veto on evictions
Among the measures of the first decree is the mechanism called "Tu Casa", managed by the Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), which provides loans of up to 50,000 euros for the purchase of a first home. This program will have funding of 10,000 million euros.
Alongside this ICO line, a 400 million euro social impact fund is created to promote the construction and development of housing through social providers, while at the same time the conditions are tightened for speculative operations involving the purchase of real estate by the so-called 'vulture' funds, expanding their definition and adjusting the exceptions with respect to the previous text.
Likewise, the first decree sets a ban on carrying out evictions of vulnerable people without alternative housing until 2030 and establishes an automatic extension of rental contracts until 2028.
With regard to the second decree, it is determined that, once the five years of rent have been exceeded—seven if the landlord is a legal entity—the contract is automatically renewed for another five years and, if the owner decides to terminate it, must pay the tenant compensation equivalent to a full year of rent.