The general secretary of CCOO, Unai Sordo, lashed out this Thursday against the "perverse system" in place in Spain whereby public housing is declassified and allowed to enter the private market.
In statements to the media in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, he stressed that the country must put two million affordable homes into circulation over the next decade.
"And no small part of these homes must be based on the promotion of officially protected housing or social price housing in various forms of promotion. And they must never be declassified," he asserted.
Sordo stressed that Spain's main problem has not been the lack of public housing construction in the last 30 years, but the "perverse system that declassifies them and allows them to enter the private market."
According to the union leader, public housing should no longer be limited to addressing situations of exclusion or severe poverty, but should become a tool for the middle classes to access homes with affordable and fixed prices, which contribute to putting downward pressure on market rents.
Tourist use and rental prices in stressed areas
"Otherwise, there will be no solution," he observed. "Empty housing must be mobilized, and the use of housing as tourist accommodation must be limited, restricted, and in some cases prohibited in stressed areas."
In this regard, Sordo maintained that the expansion of tourist housing is making prices more expensive and "inflating" city centers and tourist municipalities, which "expels" the resident population and the working class from their neighborhoods.
Therefore, he defended the need to "cap" rental prices in stressed areas, considering the "absolutely beastly price of rents in a city like Las Palmas de Gran Canaria" to be unaffordable.
"They are practically more expensive than in a city like Bilbao and with the salaries here you cannot pay 1,200, 1,400 or 1,500 euros for rent. It's an absolute absurdity," he said.
To conclude, he urged employers to "take note" of the problem. "Either the housing problem is solved, or it will not be long before many companies in our country cannot find people to work, and then they can go complain to the gunsmith. This is a social problem, but it is also now an economic problem," he concluded.