Politicians, university professors and several professionals are getting together at the Cultural Centre La Nau, today Monday 30 May, in a round table titled ‘Ley por la función social de la vivienda de la Comunidad Valenciana’ (Law for the public service of housing of the Valencian Community). This debate is focused on one of the emerging issues due to the financial crisis and the high levels of social inequality. The dimensions of the empty housing stocks in Spain widely exceed those in Europe.
According to the National Statistics Institute of the Valencian Community it is about 15%. The debate will have the interventions of Rebeca Torró, General Director of Housing of the Valencian Government; Jose Manuel Luis Hortolano, professor of Sociology of the Universitat de València and member of the Advisory Board of Law on the Social Function of Housing; Luis Casado, architect and former Director of Housing of the Valencian Government; Antonio Montiel, lawyer and Podemos liquidator at the Valencian Parliament and José Luis González and Belvis Mompó, representatives of the Plataforma de Afectados por las Hipotecas, PAH (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages). The debate will be moderated by the Administrative Law professor at the Universitat de València and member of the Advisory Board of the Social Function of Housing, Andrés Boix.
The participants in the debate maintain that the problematic has a lot to do with distribution and public investment issues, but also with a rigid legal framework that has never tried to bet on the regulation of the social function of housing with the ambition that was needed.
Consequently, while a lot of people do not have a proper roof or have suffered evictions spurred by the rigidity of the Spanish legal framework, there is an empty housing stock incomparable to the rest of Europe.
As a result of the task of social collectives like the Plataforma de Afectados por las Hipotecas (PAH), the problem has become central in the Spanish political debate and, lately, there have been occurring legal initiative in the State and various autonomic communities to try to improve the response that, as a society, we give to this situations.
In this context, the Council of the Valencian Government has announced the sending to the Valencian Government a legal proposal for the Social Function of Housing, which tries to guarantee for the first time the subjective right of housing that is recognised both by the Constitution and the Valencian Autonomy Statute. To debate about this proposal, in which professors of the Universitat de València and other universities through the Advisory Broad for the Composition of the Social Function of Housing Law, about its innovations and its possible lacks and limitations is dedicated the conference organised by the Universitat de València, with some of the actors that have been key in the whole process.
Last update: 30 de may de 2016 08:00.
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