An 87-year-old woman in Spain whose eviction set off large protests will be allowed to return home, her representatives said Tuesday. Her removal had catapulted the country’s housing crisis to the center of political debate and led the government to propose new laws to protect renters.
“There is a preliminary agreement,” said Beatriz Duro, a lawyer for the woman, María del Carmen Abascal, who is known throughout Spain as Maricarmen.
Ms. Duro said that Ms. Abascal still needed to accept the deal, which was made with the real estate company that owns her apartment. The deal would give Ms. Abascal, who is currently in a Madrid hospital, an eight-year lease with a rent equivalent to 30 percent of her income, Ms. Duro said.
Madrid’s tenant union, which organized the protests, immediately celebrated.
“Together we are stronger than any politician, judge or speculator,” the union wrote on social media late Monday.
Urbagestión, the owner of Ms. Abascal’s home, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Ms. Abascal’s eviction last week touched a nerve in a country increasingly frustrated with high housing costs and created intense popular pressure on the left-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who had promised to make housing a priority.
On Tuesday, the government said it had reached a deal with its partners in a parliamentary coalition to introduce legislation to prevent evictions of vulnerable tenants like Ms. Abascal. Details of the deal were expected to be made public later Tuesday. Its proponents could face a challenge in gaining support in Parliament from one political party that champions tenants and another more sympathetic to landlords.
Over the past few days, activists furious over Ms. Abascal’s eviction and the lack of affordable housing have camped out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, a square popular with tourists that marks the geographic center of Spain.
“The situation is getting serious,” Dora García, a 55-year-old nurse, said in the square on Saturday night. Ms. García said she feared her landlord would increase her rent again after she was “pushed out” of her previous Madrid neighborhood.
“We the renters have the sword of Damocles hanging over us,” she said.
Spain faces a housing shortfall of about 755,000 homes, according to the Bank of Spain, which has predicted that could rise to a million homes by 2028.
Experts attribute the shortage to a complex range of factors.
Spain built too much in the 2000s because of a housing bubble. When the bubble popped during the financial crisis, prices cratered and the country became reluctant to build new housing. Then, to revive the market, Spain made it easier for landlords, companies and foreign buyers to buy in.
But in the last five years, Spain has boomed with an influx of wealthy foreign investors, about three million immigrants and a mass of tourists — projected to hit 100 million in 2026 — who often stay in short-term rentals that deplete the housing stock.
As a result, demand has vastly outstripped supply in the urban centers where most people live, driving up prices and leaving an increasing number of Spaniards, especially young ones, behind. Their growing frustration exploded last week when the police broke down Ms. Abascal’s door and she left the apartment on a stretcher.
“What this highlights vividly is the extent of the housing crisis that has been going on for a long time now,” said Raymond Torres, an economist at Funcas, a think tank in Spain.
Private individuals own over 90 percent of Spain’s rental properties, according to the Bank of Spain. Still, many protesters blame real estate companies, which left-wing critics call “vulture funds,” for gutting the country’s housing stock and raising prices.
“We can’t live in our own apartment — we have to share with two other people,” Ana López, 29, said alongside her girlfriend next to the Puerta del Sol camp on Saturday night. “Speculators, vulture funds, tourists. What about us?”
In Spain, which prizes homeownership, about 20 percent of people rent while another roughly 7 percent live rent-free, often with relatives. Roughly two-thirds of Spain’s rental properties are owned by people with no more than two properties in addition to their primary residence.
Bureaucratic and jurisdictional barriers have made building new housing difficult. Public housing makes up only 2 percent of Spain’s housing stock, as opposed to 10 percent throughout Europe, in part because in the past Spain has allowed renters to buy public housing units at low prices.
Mr. Torres, the economist, said he expected the new government plans to include measures to encourage long-term contracts and tax incentives to reduce rents.
“The public purse may come into the picture here,” he said. But the government could struggle to please both political parties that defend renters and those that defend individual landlords, he said.
“In the long run,” he added, “there’s no solution other than to build 750,000 new houses.”
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