Girona stands up to Sareb: all the 'bad bank's' vacant apartments must be social rentals.

GironaThe Sareb is one of Girona's main urban developers, with more than 250 homes and several building plots spread throughout the city. Of these, however, dozens are empty, unavailable for rent, locked and locked awaiting better market conditions. No one lives there, except for a few vulnerable families without a regular lease.

Faced with this situation, and in a context of a serious lack of affordable housing for the majority of residents, Girona City Council is pressuring Sareb to take action. It is demanding that all its vacant properties in the city be brought into habitable condition, that they be transferred to the council for social housing, and that the situation of vulnerable people living as squatters be regularized. In recent months, several meetings have been held with Sareb representatives in this regard, and a week ago, Mayor Lluc Salellas sent them a formal letter. However, no response has been received. The mayor also addressed the text to the Spanish government's Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda and to Silvia Paneque, the Regional Minister of Territory, Housing, and Ecological Transition of the Generalitat, urging higher authorities to intervene in the matter.

"In Girona, through the Mission Housing strategy, we are making a great effort to provide housing policies with the necessary resources to have a direct impact on the lives of the people of Girona, because we are aware that this is an issue that affects citizens across the board. But this effort we are making at the local level cannot come alone." The number of apartments and premises that must be regularized and used for social housing, as the State had announced, is a task that is not being done and which we demand is fulfilled.

Among the critical areas where Sareb's assets are concentrated in Girona are areas such as the end of Carrer del Carme and some apartments on the border between Santa Eugenia and Salt. The City Council is also demanding that the situation be resolved on a plot of land on Carrer Montnegre, in the Can Gibert del Pla neighborhood, just across from the Jordi Vilamitjana Park, affected by the new Trueta, with capacity for 58 homes, was left unbidden in the urban development tender for the area. This site is a strategic reserve for the development of social housing and is key to achieving the urban solidarity objectives set by the Territorial Sectoral Housing Plan approved by the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government).

What is Sareb?

Sareb, an acronym for the Management Company for Assets from Bank Restructuring, is an entity created in 2012 with the aim of absorbing the toxic assets of banks during the financial crisis. Known as the bad bank Spanish, was initially conceived to clean up the banking system, but is now also tasked with facilitating affordable rentals and promoting the construction of public housing, although, de facto, In cases like Girona, this mission is not being fully fulfilled.