The councilor of Housing and Planning of Infrastructures, María Martínez Allegue, has confronted the "improvised and electoralist" decrees of the central Executive with the "historic budgets" in housing matters of the Xunta, which will amount to 520 million, "50% more."
This was stated this Wednesday in the plenary of the Parliament of Galicia, in response to a question raised by the PP deputy Moisés Rodríguez, on the occasion of which she criticized the approval of the two state royal decrees that include 21 measures, "for the lack of consensus and planning."
In this regard, she reproached that "new obligations are introduced without the necessary funding" for the administrations that must implement them. On this point, she emphasized that the housing problem requires dialogue, sufficient economic resources, and truly effective actions.
Allegue has warned that the decrees do not provide an adequate solution to the main concern of the citizens and has reiterated that the proposed initiatives insist on formulas that, as she indicated, did not manage to guarantee access to housing or increase the existing supply.
"That is to say: going back to the same recipe that did not manage to solve access to housing and that did not make more homes available to the citizens," she pointed out.
After that, she emphasized that the mandatory extensions of rental contracts once the five years have been fulfilled, the compensations provided for those who do not renew leases in the established cases, and the extension until 2030 of the suspension of evictions "do not offer an effective response to the housing problem, as they do not contribute to increasing the supply of available properties."
The councilor has defended that it is essential to guarantee the protection of vulnerable families, but has warned that this obligation cannot fall indefinitely on the owners nor be transferred to the autonomous communities without the necessary funds to face the new burdens.
At the same time, she has emphasized that these decrees imply "more government intervention in private property, more legal insecurity, more populism, and very few solutions for the main problem of lack of housing."
Tensioned areas and financing
In her intervention, Allegue also questioned that the decrees approved on Wednesday in the Consello de Ministros "reward" the autonomous communities that declare tensioned areas, through greater tax bonuses, and subordinate to these figures access to new state funds for housing.
The councilor has considered that this approach represents discrimination for the administrations that strive to facilitate access to housing without resorting to that model, insisting on her criticisms of the usefulness of tensioned areas to increase the residential supply and lower rental prices.
In the absence of specific budgets from the central Government, the head of Housing has claimed the importance of planning, financing, and policies that allow for increasing the available housing stock.
Allegue has thus highlighted the budgetary commitment of the Xunta, which will raise the funds allocated to housing to 520 million, 50% more than the budgets of the previous year.