Protest against housing crisis in Spain | Hacker News Reader

Protest against housing crisis in Spain

theguardian.com

29 pointsakbarnama54 comments

It's difficult to comment on news like this, if there was a good, fast solution, it would have been enacted by now. I do somewhat agree that more renter protection is unlikely to solve much. Spain had years of complete eviction bans, meaning even if you completely default on your rent, the owner couldn't do anything. Even if a court ordered removal, enforcement was impossible.

This lady was living in a very desirable, central area of Madrid, paying peanuts for rent. Think Central Park rent for $500.

The spanish public generally doesn't want to, "build more", as they reject megacities. One of the biggest problem is there are no good, viable second and third-tier cities that have jobs. While there are very cheap places on the countryside, no one wants to live there as there are no jobs.

A complex solution would help: Canada-style ban of non-resident ownership, at least in stressed areas, "building more", but not in Madrid, Barcelona or Valencia, and in parallel, boost small businesses and remote work to help de-centralize living. However I don't think any country really cracked the code how to fix housing.

As Iberian, the reality on the other side is unfortunately quite similar, the remote working part is spot on.

We have a very strong culture regarding office work, meaning those in charge.

When I see news or talk to friends, relatives, it seems the daily reality is eons away from central, northern Europe regarding remote, even after covid.

So it is back to either living on the city center, or spending 4 hours a day commuting from the city outskirts, with several connections, and various timetables.

While at the same time, we have those sponsored housing, and gold visas, for digital nomads with US salaries, which make natives very unhappy not being able to afford rentals priced for foreigner purses.

Those making TikTok and YouTube Shorts videos how living in Portugal and Spain is so great, the food and the "cheap" prices.

Yes, exactly, I agree. I'd argue that's what the smaller, viable cities would fix: in Germany, big cities are equally expensive, but you can rent a very nice flat for 5-600 euros, in Erlangen, Nürnberg, Dortmund, Jena, etc. Spain has a lot of available space and great infrastructure, with fast trains and fiber internet everywhere. As a thought experiment, it would be pretty cool if Spain could create a digital city, in say, Teruel province, with brand new housing and high added value jobs, perhaps paired with lowered company taxes to attract companies settling. Perhaps it would also achieve nothing, I'm just brainstorming here.

Maybe yes, maybe no, however that could be the way indeed.

> this, if there was a good, fast solution, it would have been enacted by now.

Why? Is it the law that governments have to a) be on your side? Or b) be effective?

Your underlying assumption is completely

This article does an abysmal job of describing the situation, but I hope a skeptical reader will realize that something is very odd when they notice that these protests are directed against the opposition and not against the government.

What's so hard to understand? The opposition blocked the (minority) government's legislation, so people are protesting the opposition's actions. Maybe not a common occurrence, but seem's pretty straightforward to me.

I don't understand what you mean. There were social protests against the current situation; the government took steps to improve it, and most of the opposition parties rejected those measures. The current social protests are directed against the opposition, which is responsible for the situation remaining the same. What should Spain ask the government to do?

People from functional countries may not understand why a government of a parliamentary system can't pass legislation.

Not Italians, though.

This now just looks like YIMBY’s screwing over old ladies out of their homes.

I empathize with a universal right to housing, but is that a universal right to a house in East village NY, Marina SF or El Retiro Madrid?

For everybody?

Or only for those who got in, in the 90’s?

How does that seem fair?

These details have to be worked out before you can get the public to commit to one of these and just rioting in response will only get you so far.

Yes because these same old people contributed significantly to building the country. ALl the schools, roads, houses, buildings for this and that are only here because of them.

Right so that gets you inflation adjusted pensions/social security, unlimited healthcare, even in the healthcare black hole that is America.

But that’s still not enough, you also need preferential rent control for wherever you want to live for the remaining few of boomers who don’t already own the largest swath of real-estate.

One day you will be old, thats a fact...

The same old people burned all oil, consumed all gaz and left upon the next generation scarcity and climate change to solve.

Retiro is a park, no buildings there. Are you proposing CA style encampments?

It’s a district, which includes the park but also very expensive properties.

They mentioned it specifically because the evicted lady lived there on a very low, outdated rental contract, think $500 in Central Park.

honestly if youve lived in nyc through the 90's and stayed, the city should be paying you haha

The current government has only worsened the situation and now somehow they want to be the champions of fixing after almost 8 years in power. They are not fooling anybody.

Have you seen the protest? Obviously they are fooling millions.

Seen them yes, but the polls say otherwise, if elections were to happen now the majority of the parliament will be composed of the current opposition parties.

This term started with the wrong foot anyway, there’s a feeble majority that included a right wing party from Catalonia that based their political support to the governing left just based on the promise of judicial favours (pardons for crimes related to the Catalonia independence movement/crisis). It’s precisely that party that voted no on the emergency decree they wanted to have regarding the housing crisis.

The solution to house prices increase is to build more houses, but the protests demand to freeze prices instead of building more. Are they dumb or is it intentional to keep their cities small and exclusive?

There is a lot of empty housing in this cities, and big real state corps have fiscal advantage to take over any new building so that would not fully solve the problem in Spain at least.

What would, then?

Unlimited growth always is the answer. murica!!

So you want cheap housing, for more people, with no-one forced to leave and no growth (which given the post you reacted to means no or limited building of houses/apartments)?

Should we paint the moon a more romantic pink color too?

And unlimited growth is why America has no $40T debt or did i get that wrong ?

Capital class is hungry for perpetual growth and profits (which came from a continually growing population over decades). Only lasts so much longer with fertility rates in terminal decline globally. It’ll be icky until we get to the point where deaths outnumber births forever into the future, but all countries will reach peak population eventually.

In this context, you only need a housing supply curve that stays slightly ahead of domestic population demand and can follow fertility rates down over the next century. Spain’ population will drop by a third by 2100, for example, and reached peak population in 2023. If migration is causing housing demand to exceed supply, impair migration demand until housing supply catches up, if it can.

https://ourworldindata.org/which-countries-have-already-pass...

https://ourworldindata.org/population-simulation-tool?demogr...

Life is more complicated than a curve. Assuming that its as simple as matching houses to population growth is broken because guess what people move, and homes dont.

Its that simple.

Can’t move where there isn’t room for them. It’s that simple. First come, first serve, as politics dictate. Existing citizens get a vote, those not yet citizens do not. Migration and immigration is a privilege, when available, not a right.

Maybe there is enough housing, maybe someone is allowed in, but maybe not.

I think you’re aware based on your comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49952798

America famously doesn't do the unlimited growth these days - that's why they also have a terrible housing shortage.

From experience, a lot of older people do not understand how hard it is to get an in-demand apartment, especially if rent controlled. They get the price/rent and they know that they personally dont want to pay for more housing (by having said housing built in their backyard). So this aligns with their personal preferance.

> Are they dumb or is it intentional to keep their cities small and exclusive?

Madrid has 3.4Mln people and is the second-largest city in the EU. How big do you want it to become?

I disagree on "just build more". There was a time where salaries moved more or less line with cost of living, and especially rents, but with AirBnB and estate funds sucking up any and all places they find, there's an enormous pressure that drives up rents for common people, which already struggle as-is to make ends meet. "Just build more" would simply keep pushing those towards the edges of town over time, while the city becomes a glorified luxury hotel that only rich people can afford. I welcome new regulation to combat this.

I just hope this event shatters any hope for the ultra-right parties that voted against it, and that people remember this. Ultimately, if anyone will build more, it'll still be the large real estate companies and funds that keep increasing rents on their tenants.

Build more and higher. Often times people don't want to build higher although they really need to, I hope Madrid is not one of those places.

Ban AirBnB's and ban estate funds from owning homes.

Nothing wrong with estate funds owning homes as long as you keep building. They will invest at slight profits and that is why to give flexibility that renters need.

Just need to prevent them from hoarding land or delaying building.

They have to make money so that means yearly price increases for the tenants. It's literal rent extraction while no actual value is being added.

> Madrid has 3.4Mln people and is the second-largest city in the EU. How big do you want it to become?

Bigger, obviously. Because the number of people who want to live in Madrid or visit it is higher than that. This can create a lot of economic surplus. Part of that surplus can be used to pay off locals (e.g. with housing in the newly built stock) so they win too.

The real problem, as far as I can tell, is that there's no socially accepted system for paying off locals. So locals end up resisting growth, because there's nothing in it for them except higher rents, and everyone loses.

Last time they touched the housing laws one of the brilliant things they did was to force the owner of the flat to pay the expenses for signing the leasing contract of their tenants, before that change this was paid by the tenant. What happened is the landlords switched from long term rentals to short term rentals because they did not modify that clause for those type of rentals, so the tenants got the worse outcome: rental contracts of 11 months instead of 5 years, which also opens the door to massive rent increases every 11 months or eviction instead of just the inflation rate of the year under the other contracts.

They also keep increasing the difficulty of evicting non paying tenants, taking a lot of rentals out of the market because owners are simply afraid of not being able to evict a non paying tenant, or making prices increase to account for that risk.

> was to force the owner of the flat to pay the expenses for signing the leasing contract of their tenants

The reality is, anyone renting in Spain can readily tell you things don't work this way, if you query this, they go with someone else. Tenants paying the contract fee has an enormous momentum and it's way to easy for landlords to ignore it, in our hot housing market.

Like I said, in order to avoid this mandate they turned their rentals into short term ones, the law had a loophole which made everything worse.

So the problem is the loophole, not the fact that they tried to do something good for tenants.

I also reject "just building more", at least in already too big cities. I think a more viable long-term approach would be to foster the economy in such way that creates more jobs in smaller cities. Spain needs cities like "Düsseldorf" or "Austin".

I am sceptical of this kind of central planning. Fighting against organic growth and artificially trying to increase jobs in other cities seems like it would cost a lot more as a whole than trying to solve the problem where it actually exists.

You are right to be sceptical and should be. However in this particular case, what we see today, is exactly the outcome of central planning, from the previous regime that ended in the 70s, which effectively decimated industry on the countryside and forced everyone to live in large cities.

You keep building until everyone has a house. There is no such thing as "too big".

The Dutch government designed entire cities and reclaimed land from the sea in the 1970s and it's already full. Human civilization is endless growth or death.

Tokyo has almost 15 million and works very well as a city. China is building many new cities close to the big cities to allow housing. The young population needs to live in the big cities because where the jobs are. Freezing prices will not solve the problem for the vast majority of the people besides the ones that were lucky to born in the place before the freeze.

The solution is never MORE.

Look at traffic jams, if what you claimed was true, then traffic jams in LA should never happen.

Building homes and all the supporting infrastructure from roads, schools or even parks takes a lot of time and money. The movement of tourists for example is always going to be significantly quicker, because its very easy to move a bus of people to Madrid, while it takes years to build a home for them.

Spain receives 500k immigrants/year and builds 90k homes/year.

I understand everyone has an opinion about housing prices, but your intuitions may not be well adjusted to Spain's circumstances.

Building new homes is always a delayed by a few years because homes dont just appear.

Secondly its very easy for people to move, while homes are fixed to the ground.

These are just too examples why in this modern age of constant change, there will always be a housing crisis. Looking at the world, its not only Spain with a housing crisis - its basically every single country and the cause is "change".

THis "change" and movement of people means the building of homes can never win, because it takes years to build a home and the supporting community of schools and hospitals.

Sorry, but this deficit it's pretty unique to Spain. There is no country in Europe with this level of immigration.

According to your argument, the answer to when to build is a good moment to build is "never". I can't agree, and there are counter examples too. The mass rural to urban migration happened less than 60 years ago, and the answer wasn't "do nothing".

Thats exactly my point.

You are focusing on just one input of the many that happen in a country. Spain has high levels of immigration, other countries have other forms of people movement for different reasons.

Today is also very easy for people to move vast distances, from across town to new countries.

Building new homes and communities where people can live takes years, people can move anywhere in days. The building is slow, movement is fast, the two are out of balance.

Things aren't not getting built because prices are too low.

Tax land value and legalize housing!

I hope people vote accordingly and do not forget who dismissed the decree.

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