Junts has reasoned like an economist
I do not usually agree with Junts on many things. However, regarding housing, their vote against Friday's decree contains a great economic sense which, as a science, is above any ideology.
Their proposal is based on two elementary principles: first, that social policy corresponds to the administration and, second, that any regulation must preserve the supply that intends to make a market viable. In this case, that of housing. Let us not forget. That of housing is a market. If we want it to stop being one and equate it to infrastructure, defense, or public works, it can be done. But as long as it is a market, it must be addressed as such. The first of these principles was already included in the Spanish government's decree, which provided that the Administration should compensate the private owner for the rents not received while the eviction was suspended.
If a vulnerable family cannot pay the rent, we must protect them. The question is who pays for this protection. When we force a small landlord to keep a tenant for months or years without payment, we have not solved a social problem. We have simply selected, almost by lottery, the citizen who will have to finance it.
Collective needs must be paid for collectively, through taxes and public budgets. Just as we do not ask a supermarket to feed a vulnerable family for free for years, we also cannot turn a housing owner into a private social services office.
Junts has not limited itself to saying no. It has proposed amendments: to limit the suspension of evictions, to concentrate the most severe restrictions on large operators, and to replace some mandatory extensions with tax-incentivized agreements. The principle is correct: to protect the vulnerable tenant without leaving the private landlord unprotected.
From my point of view, the second success of Junts' counterproposal is the way it addresses negative incentives. We are already suffering from how a price cap is alarmingly reducing supply. If, in addition, forced extensions, uncertainty, and the difficulty of recovering the property increase, a portion of owners will sell, opt for seasonal rentals, or withdraw their apartment from the market. The beneficiaries will be those who manage to get one of the few regulated contracts. The losers will be all those who are left out.
Catalonia has already suffered this firsthand: wherever we first placed rent caps, the available supply fell by more than half. The goal was to make the market more affordable, but it ended up shrinking.
The housing problem is not solved by looking for culprits among landlords and tenants. It is solved by increasing supply and making the State assume the obligations that correspond to it. My agreement with Junts lies in their defense of incentives and supply, regardless of any ideology.
