The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, this Saturday in Pamplona defended that the housing policies promoted by the Government of Pedro Sánchez "contains prices" and contribute to reducing evictions. In contrast, he warned that the "recipe" of PP and Vox in this area involves "the open bar, the open market and that housing prices keep rising."
Collboni spoke at a PSOE campaign event held in Navarre’s capital, together with the head of the list to the Congress, Elma Saiz. Also attending the meeting, among others, were the president of the Government of Navarre and general secretary of the PSN, María Chivite; the secretary of Organization, Esther Iso, and the socialist spokesperson on the Pamplona City Council, Marina Curiel.
For the media, the Barcelona mayor claimed that "regulation works, that the Housing Law, when it is applied, contains prices and that the measures adopted by the socialist government led by Pedro Sánchez are having the effect of stopping rent price increases in the city of Barcelona".
"We are the only major city in the State that is applying it. At this time, if in Barcelona the Housing Law and rent containment were not being applied, the people of Barcelona would be paying 400 euros more than two years ago", he stressed. In his view, "if instead of having a socialist government presided over by Pedro Sánchez, we had had a Feijóo and Abascal government, today the people of Barcelona, rather than paying the 1,150 euros on average that are being paid, would be paying 1,550 euros on average in rent every month".
As he emphasized, "that is the difference between a government that has tackled the main problem that our country has and that filled the streets all across Spain asking for intervention, asking for measures that contained prices and that there is direct support from public administrations for the construction of protected housing".
Collboni has also pointed out that "in what we have seen so far of the campaign, I have not heard the Partido Popular talk about any proposal that has to do with housing. Rather, their recipe is the open bar recipe, the open market, and that housing prices keep rising". He has regretted that "all we have heard about is a penthouse, but we have not heard about the flats that young people need in order not to be expelled from the cities; we have not heard about vulnerable people who, without the coverage of the decrees that have been applied, today would be on the street with no kind of protection".
Along these lines, he has said that in Barcelona, "since the debate began and the outlook that the decrees that have to do with the Maricarmen case would be put into motion, evictions have dropped by almost 80%." "That means that there are many vulnerable people who, if they had been expelled from their homes, today would have nowhere to go. And that is also a consequence of the brave and decisive policies of the socialist government and of Pedro Sánchez," he assured.
For this reason, he has underscored that "if there is mobilization, if everyone who can vote votes, these elections will be won by democracy and we progressives are going to win them." He has warned that "we are not only betting on reversing course on many rights and freedoms; we are also betting on the material living conditions of a lot of people who, thanks to the socialist governments, have seen their non-contributory pensions increase, the average pension, the average wage."
Thus, he has argued that voting on the 29N "means continuing with these advances and avoiding" a possible executive of the PP and Vox which, in his view, "would amount to a reaction, a rollback of everything that this country has advanced in the last eight years".
For her part, Elma Saiz has emphasized that "we have lived through a week in which there has been an overwhelmingly important citizen majority that has taken to the streets across the whole country for a social outcry, for access to decent housing". She has also recalled the approval, in the Permanent Commission of the Congress of Deputies, of the housing decrees, with the vote against, she has criticized, of PP and Vox. "They voted against measures that 85% of the citizens ask for and demand," she censured.
The candidate has cited communities such as Navarra as an example, "which comply with the Housing Law," where these measures "have direct effects on improving access to housing. In fact, rent in Navarra has not only not risen by 5%, but prices have been reduced." For this reason, she has emphasized that it is "absolutely necessary the collaboration between all public administrations to respond to one of the main challenges, which is access to housing."
Elma Saiz has reiterated that these initiatives "have positive effects when there is political commitment to provide a response to citizens' demand." She concluded that the general elections are about "good politics, which responds to challenges" and called for "let's concentrate the progressive vote on the PSOE, because it is the way to continue offering citizens responses" to their problems, among them, "access to affordable housing."