The Government is finalizing the next State Housing Plan, which will be approved shortly by the Council of Ministers, with a record investment of 7,000 million euros. The economic report itself that accompanies the decree to be approved by the Executive foresees an investment of 5,600 million aimed at increasing the supply of social and affordable housing until 2030.
Most of the resources are aimed at increasing the promotion of protected housing and there the Ministry of Housing draws a red line: the protection must be permanent. The objective is to prevent that, years later, all this effort of resources to make housing access cheaper is wasted due to the declassification of protected housing.
Because, despite the fact that the percentage of public housing in Spain is negligible compared to other European countries, the accumulated effort is not that far off. But much of this housing ended up being declassified. The most paradigmatic example are the sales of public housing to vulture funds during the worst years of the crisis by the Community and the City Council of Madrid.
To avoid it, the Government already introduced in the Housing Law the prohibition of selling protected housing, a guarantee annulled by the Constitutional Court, considering that it violated the decision-making capacity of the autonomous communities, with exclusive competence in housing matters.
The Ministry of Housing does not give up. And if it cannot prohibit it by law, it has decided to condition the funds on permanent protection, a decision endorsed by the Council of State itself in its opinion on the decree that will regulate the plan, to which Demócrata has had access.
“Nothing prevents the State from promoting this type of protected housing through the conditioning of the aid provided for in the State Plan,” argues this body, which in any case warns of the possible impact it may have on the purchase of private housing and of the need for communities to adapt their regulations.
The communities, continues the Council of State, contemplate broad protection periods in their regulations, but not permanent ones, which would force legal changes that could delay the execution of the plan. Sources from the Ministry of Housing explain to Demócrata that many communities have been adapting their regulations and gives the example of the Community of Madrid, Galicia or Andalusia.
But, in any case, the Government foresees a second measure, in case the autonomous regulation is not ready: to demand a marginal note in the Property Registry that reflects permanent protection, a clause advanced by Demócrata last January. In that case, the autonomous community must additionally regulate to the registry note the limitation of rental and sale price during the entire protection period.
“No is an adequate formula”
The Council of State considers that the Housing approach “is not an adequate formula” nor considers it “appropriate” that it can substitute permanent protection by law in regional regulations. It proposes to suppress the possibility of substituting it, without prejudice to the fact that this additional protection can be practiced once the qualification is obtained through legal channels.
It considers that the process already regulated in several communities is not comparable to recording permanent protection, nor does it consider that the function of the Property Registry is to act as an administrative registry or instrument to obtain a “purely administrative” qualification that would correspond to the communities.
“To establish that equivalence”, argues, “runs the risk of lowering the guarantees for the qualification of a dwelling as subject to a permanent public protection regime”.
"The ideal is that they adapt their regulations"
The observation, in any case, does not have an essential character. From the Ministry of Housing they assume that “the ideal is for communities to adapt their regulations”, although they celebrate that many have been doing so to reflect permanent protection.
And they defend that the Council of State does not see badly the registration annotation proposed by the Government, but that sees desirable to seek more guarantees.
On the other hand, they assure that the Ministry has taken into account practically all of the remaining observations and recommendations conveyed by the advisory body, which approved the opinion on the regulation last March.
The Executive decided to elevate to this body the plan to have the maximum legal certainty, being a plan with greater state prominence, after the approval of the Housing Law.