Neither the formula is new nor the original idea is from Pedro Sánchez.
His ad on Tuesday on the creation of a housing bonus for rent caught everyone by surprise, including his government partner, united we can, and the former Socialist president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, launched a similar measure in the
Last part of his mandate and experts warn from the Boomerang effect that, as then, could lead now.
Both bonuses are, roughly, very similar.
Zapatero baptized the initiative of him as “basic income of emancipation”, although it was popularized as a “check-housing”, and approved it in September 2007, six months before the general elections.
It consisted of a monthly aid of 210 euros per month destined for rent, plus 600 euros of loan for bail and a six-month endorsement.
The check was granted to young people between 22 and 29 years, with maximum incomes of 22,000 euros gross annual and over a four-year limit.
The chronicles of that moment say that it was an “ad-pump” that few expected, just as it happened on Tuesday with the message of Pedro Sánchez.
The president of the executive surprised with the announcement at the I Urban Forum of Spain that was held in Seville when the entire auditorium expected some assessment on the housing law that he himself had just unlocking a few hours before.
So unprepared he took all that until the Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra (UP), admitted at night that he was not aware of the plan.
She was also the first to warn her possible consequences: “Zapatero rental aids had as a consequence that many landlords rose the rental price,” she said in a radio interview.
This is also one of the risks to which the sources consulted by this newspaper regarding the bonus point.
“The measures should be aimed at defasing the market, not on the contrary. Inject public money in the system to fill out the pocket of the great rentists will not solve the situation, but quite the opposite, will contribute to climbing prices,” says Fernando Barrera,
Spokesman for the Tenants and Tenant Union of Madrid.
Barrera also warns that the effects may not be there, since this increase in prices could not only be transferred directly to rental contracts, but also outside of them.
“A black market can be encouraged” in which the owners demand the tenants an extra amount beyond what is contained in the contract between them, and can also favor some discrimination when choosing the landlords, “he adds
.
Barrera refers to owners who, in search of more future security, give priority to tenants who receive the bonus ahead of those who do not.
For all these reasons, the spokesperson for the Tenarchs Union believes that the Government should allocate the money assigned to this measure – a departure of 200 million euros in the upcoming general budgets of 2022 – to implement other types of public housing policies that
They contribute to reduce the problems of access to the housing of the youngest and protect the social and accessible rental park.
The Housing Bonus that raised Sánchez on Tuesday would be an aid of 250 euros monthly to young people between 18 and 35 young people whose annual income level is less than 23,725 euros.
It would be valid in the next two years and for vulnerable families, that bonus will be completed with more direct aid to rent up to 40% of the value.
The Check-Rent of Rodríguez Zapatero took four years after its entry into force and according to the figures that collected the information at that time, left a balance of “400 million euros invested, half a million requests and more than 301,000 precarious veins
between 22 and 30 years of age beneficiaries “.
Waiting to know the specific characteristics of the Sánchez formula, what can be said so far is that the tool has managed to agree on its uncertainty to virtually all parts of the market, both tenants and owners.
The sources of the big homemade consulted by this newspaper agree that it would be more effective than the government to use the money for the bonus in other types of tools that attack the root of the problem and solve it structurally.
“It is a populist road that does not solve the situation,” they point to the world.
“More would be worth applying money to create a new park, which would solve much better the problem, which does not subsidize precariousness, because that bonus is a way of subsidizing and maintaining aid-based precariousness and do not lead to any place”
, Other sources warn.
“It is undoubted that you have to help young people to emancipate and access a home, but this is not the best way,” they reiterate.
