The Minister of Housing and Urban Agenda, Isabel Rodríguez, has announced that the electoral program of the PSOE for the elections on November 29 will be "ambitious" in the field of housing. Likewise, she has emphasized that the credibility of the Executive requires detailing both the initiatives that have been launched and those that could not move forward due to the lack of sufficient support in the Cortes.
In a lunch-discussion organized by the Club Siglo XXI, Rodríguez insisted that the Government has faced obstacles in validating some of its initiatives, "not due to a lack of determination," but because it does not have a comfortable majority in the Congress of Deputies. She cited as an example the two royal decree-laws on housing that were rejected in the Lower House on October 2. "It was not a lack of courage, it was a lack of votes," she emphasized while reviewing the main hurdles of the legislature.
The head of Housing specified that the electoral program is still in the drafting phase, although she pointed out that a balance of the actions developed in the last three years could function by itself as a campaign.
Rodríguez has highlighted the increase in the budget allocated to housing, which has gone from about 450 million euros in the last budget of the previous Executive to nearly 4,000 million, in addition to the approval of the Housing Law and the extension of the duration of lease contracts.
Similarly, she has claimed the consensus reached with all the autonomous communities for the new State Housing Plan, endowed with 7,000 million euros until 2030, which includes the commitment to maintain protection in properties built with public resources.
In the fiscal area, she has defended the bonuses planned for owners who lower rental prices, included in the Royal Decree-Law currently in force.
THERE IS NO SINGLE SOLUTION
Rodríguez has admitted that the problem of access to housing cannot be solved with a single measure and has stressed the importance of cooperation among the different administrations.
In her opinion, there is today a greater degree of agreement among the citizens and in the real estate sector than among the political formations, a gap that she has described as a "drama" when referring to a social demand like housing.
In relation to the general strike called for next November 11 and the mobilizations that have followed since the eviction of Maricarmen, the elderly woman evicted from her home in Madrid who later died in the hospital, it has been pointed out that citizens "must always be listened to" and has defended the legitimate right of the population to claim their rights.
Nevertheless, it has emphasized that the most decisive way for society to express itself will be at the polls and has added that it trusts that it will do so with "determination" on November 29.