In early October, the Housing Group of the Casco Viejo de Bilbao AZET held a campaign against the persecution of a large public. Since then, it has multiplied the persecutions rather than those that have been suspended, and recently threatened to evict two tenants of the union, who are members of it. If so, the Housing Group has appeared before the media to report.

The press conference held this Saturday morning at the crossroads of Hernani and San Francisco has explained the circumstances of the case. The two people threatened with eviction reside on a floor of San Francisco Street, property of the owner of a home that has more than ten floors in the neighborhood. They denounce that speculators rent homes to migrants and, in general, to people at risk of exclusion in order to take advantage of their defenselessness before the law. “This great owner has been reproducing this kind of speculative practice for several years,” they stressed.

For a few months now, the landlord has been persecuting his tenants in eleven ways on the pretext that they have been delayed in paying for the rent. They have denounced that they now want to drive them out illegally, as they have been threatened with their intention to change the lock, leaving the two tenants on the street from one day to the next. On 1 December it showed its intention to do so. Faced with the situation, AZET has made it clear that it will not accept any eviction: “The time has come to organize collectively, to put an end to the impunity of speculators and the complicity of the City Hall.”

Responsibility of the institutions

The Housing Group has recalled that this case, far from being an exception, is a norm for many neighbors, which becomes even more common and extreme in the case of migrants. In this sense, they have clarified that, if that is the case, it is not only for the great owners “eager for money” and “racists”, but also the institutions have responsibility for this reality. “The City Hall and social services are also complicit in this situation; on the one hand, they make it difficult for migrants to exercise their rights and, on the other, they offer their owners a great facility to abuse their tenants.” As an example of this, they have pointed out that migrants are hindered in accessing the aid, or owners are allowed to withdraw the census without giving guarantees to tenants.

Long list of persecutions

In addition to denouncing the threat of eviction, they have taken advantage of the hearing to recall that the owner has harassed neighbors in several ways in recent months. Among the abusive behaviors that have been listed, most tenants are hired without a contract or a standard, require an economic bonus to the inverse tenants, constantly threaten them with descents, evictions, complaints to Lanbide or courts, remove the drawer from the washing machine so that the clothes cannot be washed, and remove the pits and bulbs from the home.

In recent weeks this persecution has intensified, “trying to bring to the extreme the unsustainable situation of the house”: the owner has removed the boiler, has broken the shower tube and several graves and has used at home a toxic anti-wrinkle product appeared at home, without warning the tenants, which has caused one of the tenants to be hospitalized and poisoned.

The video shows the testimony of one of the tenants:

Remember Sanfrane's speculator? The conflict is continuing!
📢 November 28 at 10:30 PRESS CONFERENCE. At the junction of Hernani and San Francisco.
🎥 In this video you can see the testimony of one of our colleagues. It gives us more details on the case. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/lhOCKG0Bws

— AZET Housing Syndicate (@AzTaldea) November 26, 2020