The other evictions: “They offer us 3,500 euros if we leave the house”

Isabel She sells socks on the street to ensure that at home they do not depend only on the little more than 700 euros that her husband charges. They meet a rent of 235 euros since they could no longer take on a mortgage that climbed to 1,200 euros a month. Your flat, in Badalona, passed from the hands of the CAM al Sabadell and, for about a year, the landlord has been Coliseum Prosecutor’s Office. It is a subsidiary of Cerberus, an international investment fund that acquired some 46,000 properties from Sabadell for 3,430 million euros. Unaware of the transaction that included the house they have lived in since 1999, Isabel and her partner carry a minor and a report from social services confirms that the shortage overwhelms them: in recent months, they have had to stock up at food banks. They have months left on their contract, but Promontoria informs them that it will not renew them. He even proposes to pay them to leave now.

“They offered me 2,000 euros if I left before January. I told them where I was going with that. We asked if they gave us the option to renew or buy, and they answered that we had no option at all,” explains Isabel. Montse has run into the same refusal of Promontoria to extend the lease of 147 euros. She was defeated in August: “We started sending papers in March. I had just lost a job and had two or three months of unemployment. We sent the documentation several times, but we had no response. In October they called us and offered us 3,500 euros if we left the house “.

Montse refused to leave the house for which she was mortgaged in 2005 and in which she accumulated a debt impossible to repay, until she exchanged it for an affordable rent: “Money does not solve anything for me. I could pay the entrance of a flat, but  How do I pay the other months? I can’t pay 600 or 700 euros a month. My husband earns 1,200 euros and we have four minor daughters. The social worker asked that they make us a rent for 10% of my husband’s salary, but they listen deaf. They told us that if we did not want the 3,500 euros, we would abide by the consequences if the law changed, because we could run out of rent “.

The Constitutional Court has pending to examine an appeal of the PP against the decree of the Generalitat which extends the obligation to banks and funds to reduce rents also to those who occupy a home since before June 2019 and social services guarantee that they suffer from hardships. In turn, Catalan law requires affordable rents to be extended for seven years when the hardships that led to it continue.

The Consumer Agency de la Generalitat replies that payment offers from large landlords are not illegal if residents agree to collect them and no coercion is shown, although it clarifies that it is punishable if there is no rental proposal when it comes to a disadvantaged home. The purpose of the disbursement “is not to renew the mandatory social rent,” he says. Veránica Dávalos, a lawyer specializing in housing: “It is a very generalized practice with various funds. They offer money to tenants or people in precarious, many are tempted and take it.”

“Accept the money? Whoa! I’ve been in that apartment since 2004,” he scrambled Latifa, who lives with his daughter, a law student, and receives a benefit of less than 600 euros. Although they have not extended his contract, he continues to transfer 184 euros per month to the account where he paid the rent, which was exhausted in the summer. Promontoria suggested giving him 3,000 euros to leave.

“Economic incentive”

“The offer is always verbal, never written,” he says. Enric Marín, from the platform Sant Roc is Badalona, which supports families in the depressed periphery of Barcelona. The compensation is presented as an “economic incentive” to pay for the move or the deposit of another home. Transmits it Solvia, which manages the properties of Promontoria. Through the manager, the fund responds that it does not report on particular cases and that, in any case, it takes into account vulnerability indicators.

Different sources agree that some investment funds have bid 5,000, 8,000, 11,000 and up to 15,000 euros in recent years for a home to be vacated. “In many cases they are squats and the investor sees that, even if he pays compensation, he can get a return of 40,000 or 50,000 euros by selling the apartment. It is reprehensible and feeds a monster, because there are those who can resell the key to win 1,000 or 2,000 euros more his squatting another home and waiting to be paid to leave “, warns a lawyer from a large Barcelona city council.

Sant Roc som Badalona also warns that squatting and mafias that take over rooms to do business can be encouraged. “And people with social rent are left out in the open,” emphasizes MarÃn. Happens to Sonia, which does not know if he will be able to continue in the house for which he was tied to a credit that he replaced by a lease of 138 euros, and also Antonia, with the contract ended since August. “I would understand if I didn’t pay, but I don’t owe anything,” he emphasizes. Alfonso, to whom Promontoria will not extend the rent of 120 euros for which it exchanged the mortgage. They don’t offer him money: “They say they don’t want to sell or rent. I asked that they at least give me a room to be with my son. If they kick us out, we’ll go back in.”