(English) April 19th, 2012
After unemployment, and closely associated to it, housing evictions have become the most frightening face of the economic crisis in Spain, shooting up rates of poverty and social exclusion.
The evictions of owners or tenants in debt last year recorded a record high, up nearly 22 percent over 2010, reaching 58 000 241 families, while more than one million houses are empty.
These data, published in March by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), reveal the impact on housing loss caused by the crisis and unemployment in more than five million people.
For failing to pay rent or because the buyer was unable to pay its mortgage to the bank, only between October and December evictions amounted to 15 000 347, in line with previous quarters figures, said the governing body of judges.
Regarding the executions or proceedings brought by mortgage lenders to keep unpaid houses, the CGPJ certified in 2011 a decline of 17 per cent to 77 000 854, far from the 93 000 636 actions recorded in 2010.
Since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2008, coinciding with the bursting of the housing bubble, there were over 300 thousand foreclosures in Spain, which left thousands of people in the street with a debt for life.
Given its multiplication, the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy developed the so-called Code of Good Practice that is supposed to protect the poorest families, which voluntarily joined a large number of banks.
According to these regulations, approved in March, dation in payment -to settle the debt with the returning of housing to the bank- will be promoted for families with all unemployed members and first houses of less than 200,000 Euros.
Those affected must be owners of one house, they may not have income from work or economic activities, and mortgage payments must exceed 60 percent of total family income.
Criticisms at code of good banking practice
Symbol of the debacle from the bursting of the housing bubble, the eviction of those who cannot afford the mortgages are increasingly challenged by society, and many have even been prevented by the action of various social organizations.
Users Association of Banks, and Insurance (Adicae) predicted the failure of the law devised by the executive, because, in its discretion, it may solve hardly an insignificant number of eviction problems that interests entities.
According to Adicae, dation in payment is only a solution in extremis for people who face eviction right now.
The code neither convinced the Platform Affected by Mortgage (PAH), which in its three years of existence has paralyzed nearly 200 evictions and made hundreds of dations in payment and some debt forgiveness after auction.
For Ada Colau of the PAH, the controversial code, which includes dation in payment as a voluntary option, is a joke.
It establishes very restrictive conditions and leaves the dation as the last option, so that, for practical purposes, it channels the process towards a debt refinancing interesting only to financial institutions, she said.
Most of the evicted people have children in their care, Colau warned after wondering what kind of society could look in the mirror and not feel shame when injected money to some banks that are abandoning families with children on the street.
Therefore, she advocated civil disobedience, like opposing to an expulsion authorized by a judge, before an unjust law transgressing the human rights.
Recently, Judges for Democracy (JPD) considered a mere populist media proclaims the Government’s proposal according to which families who are on the threshold of exclusion can pay off their debt with the bank returning their houses.
The association of liberal judges demanded a reform of the current mortgage legislation taking into account its unequal distribution of the risks and damages of the economic crisis among the parties concerned, the bank and the mortgagor.
It denounced the serious social effects of the mortgage law, which allows the financial institution to appropriate the house for 60 percent of the estimated value and demand the citizen the rest of the debt not covered.
The Ombudsman Maria Luisa Cava de Llano called for regulating the system of auction of confiscated apartments.
It is tremendously serious that banks can keep the foreclosed house at a price below 60 percent of its value, she said.
Adopting measures to continue using housing as a rent affordable by the debtor or accepting tenants to declare bankruptcy to get rid of debt are some of the Ombudsman´s proposals to strengthen the protection of mortgaged people.
«Governments have a responsibility to protect the right of access to decent housing, gateway to the other rights,» warned a few weeks ago in Barcelona Raquel Rolnik, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing.
Rolnik branded as illegal eviction processes and blamed the bank and the government for the housing emergency the country faces.
Mortgage crisis hits the immigrants
According to the National Coordinator of Ecuadorians in Spain, some 15 000 immigrants from that South American nation, who lost their jobs with the crisis, are affected by the problem of mortgage loans, many of them granted under false pretenses.
In late February, the Quito embassy in Madrid launched a free legal advice to their fellow citizens affected by the mortgage debts and evictions arising from them.
In principle, this program will run about three months in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Murcia, the four Spanish cities with the largest Ecuadorian population, the largest Latin American community in this European country, with nearly half a million people.
This is a human drama living all over Spain, but the most vulnerable group is integrated by the migrants because they are not on their land or have family to turn to, told Prensa Latina the Ecuadorian ambassador in Madrid, Aminta Buenaño.
Ecuadorians are hard workers and banks saw in them a good niche market, the diplomat said in an interview with this agency.
They were seduced by certain sectors of banking, even sought after in the workplace, getting offers with many facilities and not much information, whereby they ending up signing very damaging contracts, said Buenaño.
The Ecuadorian got into this because one of the requirements to apply for family reunification was just having a stable flat (housing), the ambassador remarked.
The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, referred the plight of his countrymen, during a brief visit to Spain on last March 17.
Debt should be extinguished by giving the house, but it´s not, which goes against the ethical principles of the economy, Correa said about the dation in payment.
If there is not a relaxation of mortgage laws we are going into the worst of all worlds, people who need houses without houses and banks not needing houses with houses, denounced the head of state, who lamented that all risk fall on the human being and not on the capital.
Source: Prensa Latina News Agency
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