Housing (or rather the difficulties of accessing it) will become one of the workhorses of the current legislature in the Valencia City Council. With almost 1,500 people registered in the Registry of Housing Applicants (REDHA), this growing social problem could be the touchstone of the new PP and Vox executive, beyond the harsh dialectic that the right maintains with Compromís and PSPV on the matter. of mobility.

The mayor of València, María José Catalá, pointed out yesterday that housing is “one of the basic and nuclear issues of this government because the person needs that dignity, that private space where they can develop their life project.”

Already in the electoral campaign, aware of the difficulties of the previous left-wing Government in addressing the lack of affordable housing, the then PP candidate promised to build 1,000 publicly promoted homes in eight neighborhoods of the city. She also conspired to triple aid for young people’s access to housing.

Already in the Government, the owner of the command staff wanted to celebrate her first 100 days at the head of the Mayor’s Office with a visit to the Safranar neighborhood where the City Council has purchased 131 homes for more affordable rentals for young people and people over 65 years of age. An operation that was possible thanks to the trial and withdrawal law that the PP tried to overthrow in the Constitutional Court.

In this line of placing housing as one of the priorities of the current executive, Catalá presided yesterday in the Tabacalera building, the signing of the first 18 affordable rental housing contracts of his mandate. As explained by municipal sources, these are homes awarded to people registered in the register of Housing Claimants and are located in the district of Jesús (12); two in Poblats Marítims and four in Ciutat Vella. Its rent is between 110 and 338 euros per month.

The new contracts served the mayor to put the eight years of Rialto government in front of the mirror (the municipal executive presided over by Joan Ribó with the PSPV and Podem in the first term and only with the Socialists for the last four years). “We are aware of the difficulties that the residents of Valencia have in acquiring or renting a home in our city and, for this reason, we have put the accelerator on. In the last mandate, 31 homes were awarded and in 5 months we have awarded 18 and another 20 more are planned in February.”

Catalá’s signing of contracts with the beneficiaries of the 18 homes did not please the opposition. The spokesperson for Compromís in the Valencia City Council, Papi Robles, spoke directly of “an illegal public act, which contravenes the Institutional Advertising Law, and which has used the allocation of social housing to vulnerable people for self-promotion and personal promotion.” Robles criticized the public dissemination of the image of citizens who are beneficiaries of public policies, endangering their privacy.

For her part, the socialist spokesperson, Sandra Gómez, criticized the “extreme ridiculousness” of the mayor after having “a hand kiss” with the 18 families to whom the City Council has awarded affordable rental homes that were already registered in the municipal park. and in which, therefore, other families were already residing before.

An extreme that the city council denies: 12 homes of those that have been signed correspond to the purchase of a building by the City Council for the right of first refusal and the remaining six homes are comprehensive rehabilitation of homes; none of the 18 were already rented.