“The rent is sky-high, so we have to share a flat with two, three and even four people until we get a job with a decent salary. Until we are 35 years old we cannot even think about becoming independent, much less about buying a house,” explains Pablo Bottero, president of the Consell de la Joventut de València (CJV). His statement condenses all the evils that his generation faces: housing crisis, precarious employment and overqualification. To this, we must also add a real estate market that is also stressed by the increase in tourist rentals.
For all these reasons, yesterday young members of the Youth Council signed a manifesto in front of the Valencia town hall building to ask for a housing policy that takes them into account. And they did it with the help of the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Valencia and student representatives from the two main Valencian universities, the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the Universitat de València (UV).
“We have to rent rooms because we can’t afford anything else. If you have money for a down payment, nowadays a mortgage is better for you than a rent,” lamented Javier Esquerdo, UPV student delegate. But they recalled from the Consell de la Joventut that the average age of emancipation in the Valencian Community already exceeds 30 years of age and that only 1 in 10 young people has the possibility of doing so.
In such a scenario, Bottero emphasizes that a public housing stock is needed and gives as an example the “Vienna model”, where more than 60% of the population resides in one of the 220,000 officially protected homes or in another 200,000 that received aid. public.
Another of the proposals on which he placed special emphasis is the regulation of vacation rentals, a request in which the young people agree with the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Valencia, especially involved in the fight against the proliferation of tourist homes in the capital. Valencian.
“There has to be a moratorium because this is also detrimental to the citizens of Valencia. We must find the greatest possible solutions so that young people and older people, who are also running out of options due to the meager pensions they have, can have decent housing,” said María José Broseta, president of the Federation, yesterday.
The complaints of young people join those of neighborhood groups and even those of hoteliers who have also recently requested to put limits on the growth of tourist apartments. Therefore, a massive call for mobilization in the city in the style of the Canary Islands is not ruled out, since there are many gestures that are being carried out in the city by the different groups fighting for decent housing. “I think the situation is reaching such a great degree of tension that anything is possible, but I would like the administrations to sit down and see what the problem we have in the city really is,” Broseta asked.
For his part, the president of the Consell de la Joventut de València calls for social and political consensus so that the municipal government of the mayor, Mª José Català, “takes the necessary measures”, within the Social Council of the city , to guarantee the right to emancipation of the city’s young people.