
The Platform is best known for actively obstructing evictions. But it has also occupied 15 blocks of flats and countless more houses, specifically those owned by banks that were bailed out by the government.
It is negotiating for evicted homeowners to live there legally while paying ‘social’ rent – no more than a third of their income. So far, banks have acquiesced in two buildings.
The group reports that over a thousand Spaniards are now squatting these homes, including more than 300 children.
‘Spain has three million empty buildings – the most in Europe – and more than a million of them belong to the banks,’ says the Platform’s Gala Pin. ‘We don’t need to build more houses. We rescued the banks with our money – millions of euros of public money – and they have to give something back.’
Pressure from the Platform and its cohort of disgruntled citizens secured new social housing and mortgage relief laws last year. But the policies have largely been branded a failure. Of the more than 6,000 bank- owned properties given over to social housing under the new laws, as many as two-thirds remain empty because application conditions are so strict. Particularly galling is the clause that requires families to apply through the same financial entity that evicted them in the first place.
via Spain’s unlikely squatters — New Internationalist.
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