The housing-related decree-laws will be put to their final vote this Thursday, 12 November, in the Standing Committee of the Congress. The appointment comes just one day after the general strike for housing and on the eve of the official start of the election campaign, which will begin at 0.00 hours on Friday 13.
As happens with any decree-law, the rules are in force from their publication in the Official State Gazette (BOE), which in this case took place on 7 October. However, the Constitution requires that they be submitted to ratification in Congress within a maximum of thirty days.
With the Cortes dissolved due to the election call, it is the Standing Committee—the only parliamentary body that remains active after the dissolution—that must decide whether to uphold or overturn these decree-laws.
The date chosen to resolve this matter is this Thursday, 12 November. In addition to debating and voting on the decree-laws, the appearance of the Third Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, is scheduled, who will lay out the planning for the electricity grid through 2030.
Later, the Standing Committee will have to meet again to pronounce itself on other decree-laws still pending votes in Congress: one with measures for social and labor protection, another with aid for the victims of the Urda (Toledo) rail accident, and a final one, approved this same Tuesday, aimed at supporting single-parent families.
Majority assured for the first decree, not for the second
With regard to housing, these are two differentiated decree-laws: one sets out a broader set of actions to intervene in the market in response to price increases, and the other introduces changes to the first in order to require the landlord to pay the tenant an economic compensation if the landlord decides to terminate the rental contract early.
The Executive has already tried to push through both rules at the beginning of October this year, but it ran into rejection from PP, Vox, Junts, and UPN, who together held an absolute majority of 178 seats in the two texts. In addition, the PNV and Coalición Canaria also took a position against the decree that regulated compensation for the tenant.
The failure of those ballots led to the scheduling of an early election for November 29. With the Cortes already dissolved, the Government chose to approve the decrees again, introducing slight changes so that they would not be identical to the previous ones, with the difference that now the vote is held at the Diputación Permanente, where it does have sufficient support to move ahead, at least, with the most general decree on measures.
This body is made up of 69 deputies. The left bloc totals 34 representatives, distributed among PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Bildu, and Podemos, a formation that groups together the entire Grupo Mixto; against the 34 seats gathered by PP, Vox, and Junts.
In this scenario, the decisive vote corresponds to the PNV, which has a representative in the Diputación. The Basque formation has already indicated that, just as it did before the early election was called, it will back the decree with the broadest content and reject the second.
In this way, the decree that includes the prohibition of evictions, limits on the actions of the “vulture” funds in the purchase of housing, and tax bonifications for both homeowners and tenants may move forward with 35 votes in favor and 34 against. The other decree, which regulates compensation for renters, does not have a sufficient majority to be ratified.
Loans of up to 50,000 euros and a veto on evictions
Among the measures included in the first decree is the mechanism called “Your Home,” which will be managed by the Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO) and which provides for loans of up to 50,000 euros for the purchase of a first home. This line will have an endowment of 10,000 million euros.
Along with the ICO’s resources, an impact fund for social purposes is created with an endowment of 400 million euros to promote housing development by social entities and providers. At the same time, the conditions are tightened for speculative home-purchase operations by the so-called “vulture” funds, expanding their definition and adjusting the exceptions with respect to the previous text.
Likewise, the first decree establishes the prohibition on carrying out evictions of vulnerable people without an alternative housing option until 2030, and it regulates an automatic extension of rental contracts until 2028.
As for the second decree, the text establishes that once the five years of the lease have been exceeded (seven if the landlord is a legal entity), the contract shall be automatically extended for another five years and, if the landlord decides to terminate it, compensation equivalent to a full year of rent must be paid to the tenant.