On Tuesday the Spanish Government approved a package of social measures in the face of the coronavirus situation. These include housing. However, the measures did not favour more than 200 collectives and thousands of tenants who have offered the possibility to strike, and have maintained the rental strike that was to begin on 1 April. On the web suspensioalquileres.org an evaluation of the public measures has been made, “it is necessary to make it very clear that they are very insufficient”, you can read.

Suspension of evictions for six months, extension of the contract for six months under the same current rental conditions, freezing of rent prices, micro-credits of interest to tenants of 0%, which can be reinstated to six or ten years, relaxation of the conditions for access to micro-credits, a four-month moratorium for tenants of large owners and investment funds, and State aid of up to EUR 900 for those who are unable to pay micro-credits. These are the measures adopted by the Spanish Government on 31 March on housing, all aimed at maintaining the rents.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that the people most affected by the crisis should continue to pay rent inflated by speculation and indebted themselves,” they read the call for a rental strike. The Spanish Government, through the measures taken, has sent out a clear message: despite the fact that the economy is falling and people’s incomes are falling, it advocates maintaining rent prices. And they add that that means they're not taking into account the gap between revenue and expenditure, getting deeper and deeper.

It can be concluded that the inclusion of micro-credits in the measures responds to the desire to paralyse rents at all costs in the face of the crisis. These measures have been the subject of severe criticism: “Microcredit measures will mean that as long as thousands of families are indebted, landlords will keep their liquidity and purchasing power intact.” In his view, the Government has chosen to increase public debt for the benefit of the real estate market, so that the real estate market can emerge from the crisis without harming it. They denounce that they use a dubious argument to justify what is being done to that end: that most owners need the rent to survive. “There is no evidence that this is the case, moreover, the few figures of lack of transparency in this market indicate the opposite: the landlords, without taking into account the rent revenue, earn an average of 38.000€, while in the tenants’ homes they have an average income of 23,000€.”

The Llogateres Union denounces that the next Asval association, created to function as a lobby of vulture funds and real estate agencies, also uses the same discourse. Although it is the big speculators who are behind the association, it is presented as a representation of the small and large owners who seek the protection of the small owners in order to achieve their interests.

In the face of this situation, the organizers of the rent strike have recalled that as far as the owners of a single home who need rent income are concerned, they have always claimed the same thing: that the government should protect them.

Alternative: suspension of payments

In this context caused by the coronavirus, there are many people who have run out of income and are running out of income, but despite that, the Spanish Government has endeavoured to maintain the rental prices that have risen by 40 per cent over the past seven years. In view of this situation, the convoys have concluded that the measures adopted have not provided a solution to the unsustainable situation in some households and have therefore decided to continue the rental strike.

“The government is forcing us to choose forcibly between eating and indebtedness. But there is an alternative to what we are predicting containment: the suspension of payments,” they conclude. They have argued that this is the measure that can prevent tenants from drowning and that it will also help to break the crisis with the logic of debt and public resources.

“We do not repeat the same mistakes as in the 2008 crisis, which we are still paying,” they stressed.