The eviction of a 78-year-old neighbor in the Gòtic neighborhood of Barcelona due to an initial non-payment of 177 euros became effective this Thursday. The launch was last postponed in November. In 2017, the parties agreed on home improvement works assumed by the property with the consideration of increasing the rent by 88.8 euros per month.
The woman, however, did not initially pay the first two monthly payments because she believed that the works did not comply with what was agreed. In November, the property agreed to negotiate a market-rate rent. But finally the woman has been evicted. Resistim al Gòtic blames Barcelona City Council, but it assures that it was the property that rejected its proposal.
As Resistim explained to Gòtic in a statement, during these three months negotiations have taken place and there was an agreement that it regretted that the Barcelona council ended up breaking “in a totally opaque and shameful way.” This agreement would establish that the woman would continue paying the old rent and the city council would complement it up to the thousand euros required for the property, with a fixed date to have access to the public housing that the neighbor is waiting for.
Resistim al Gòtic has stated that, finally, the council has rejected the agreement with “absurd, incoherent and credible” arguments. The group recognized that payments of rental fees to speculative owners do not attack the root of the problem, but defended that they allow people in the eviction process to continue living in their usual home while they have an emergency apartment. In that case, the woman had lived at that address for 55 years.
The entity sees a change in political criteria related to the lack of housing policies of the new council, with an “absolute absence” of dialogue and solutions to fight against evictions.
For all this, she has demanded immediate explanations from the City Council and that this neighbor be relocated “immediately” to public housing in the neighborhood.
Sources from the City Council explained that the problem is that it cannot guarantee payments from third parties, as the property was claiming. Therefore, her proposal was to give social emergency aid to the woman in the form of housing of 1,000 that would be paid to the property so that the neighbor could stay in her apartment.
The council insisted that it cannot endorse, but it can grant emergency aid. For this reason, he agreed to pay this emergency aid until the woman left the home and went to a public apartment. In this sense, the same sources indicated that the property rejected this option.
