The ERC group will present in plenary session today, Friday, a proposal negotiated with the government of Mayor Jaume Collboni in order to combat real estate mobbing in Barcelona. The agreement contemplates multiplying the resources of the anti-harassment units of the Council’s Housing offices to speed up the mediation processes between owners and tenants and thus stop any harassment.
This plan also provides for ex officio monitoring by the City Council of all vertically owned buildings sold in the city during the last five years. The objective of all this is to bring to light and stop increasingly common bad practices that too often remain hidden. Everything indicates that the initiative will go ahead, that it will find the necessary support. This is the first sign of the recent rapprochement between socialists and republicans in the City Council.
Oriol Junqueras, president of ERC, visited the residents of number 16 Giralt del Pellisser street yesterday afternoon to show his concern about this problem. For almost a year now, these tenants have been denouncing that whoever bought this modest but greedy property at the time was not trying to harass them to get them to leave their homes and set up a bunch of illegal tourist apartments here, more or less what they already did in the past. adjacent buildings.
The management of the City Council’s inspection services accuses him of directing the largest network of illegal tourist apartments ever seen in Barcelona, ??of setting up a network of more than 70 apartments well hidden through a dozen front companies and supposed straw tenants. The City Council is processing the largest sanction ever imposed for these practices on an individual: 600,000 euros! but the truth is that the fines do not seem to deter him. La Vanguardia recently explained how tourists have still not stopped entering and leaving many of the floors in this complex.
And the neighbors who remain here told Junqueras yesterday that they do not understand it, that this same Wednesday the people who a few months ago settled in a couple of homes in very poor condition on the property cut off the electricity to the staircase again, which Once again, agents from the Mossos d’Esquadra and the Urban Police went to the property to report this new episode, that both police forces are aware of the suspicious floods that from time to time ruin their roofs, of the illegal works that left the walls full of cracks, the strange cut in the television antenna, the insults and provocations on the landings… “Is it that in this city you can do whatever you want and get away with it? Can you make people’s lives miserable until they leave their homes and thus do business? Can administrations really not stop these people? And what the City Council does is offer us advice. We will meet again with the City Council, but at this point we are no longer clear why. “We are fed up, tired, disappointed…”
And Junqueras nodded, and told them that he was right, and that he will call whoever is necessary in order to reverse this situation. “We cannot allow an owner to commit all kinds of abuses to kick out some tenants and set up tourist flats. People have the right to live with dignity, and when someone attacks this dignity they should find a response from the entire society and especially from the institutions. ERC has been working in this direction for some time, and we will continue to do so.” Then one of these people who has been causing so much trouble lately appeared on the landing and the neighbors told her to come in, but she responded with a couple of bad words and left.
“These people always find a way to get by and do business,” the neighbors continued. Now it seems they want to sell the building. Lately the coming and going of potential buyers up the stairs is continuous. The potential buyers come with some people and enter and leave the homes! They even tried to enter ours. We actually don’t even know who the formal owner of the building is. “They don’t stop playing with a lot of commercial companies.” “We assume that the more apartments that are uninhabited, the more money they can ask for. On the internet they ask for 1,900,000 euros, 300,000 more than what they paid…” “We also found ads to rent monthly apartments in the neighboring properties, 35 m2 for 2,000 euros per month! You can see that these people always do business!”