Barcelona expropriates empty apartment bank owned: The City Council of Barcelona has expropriated for the first time the right to use an empty house whose property falls to the BBVA bank, and has promoted a sanctioning process against another for initiating an eviction without previously offering a social rent to the affected family.
The housing councilor, Lucia Martin, explained this Friday at a press conference that the consistory has applied the Catalan laws 24/2015 and 4/2016 - urgent measures for emergency in the field of housing and energy poverty - a Once the Socialist Government withdrew the unconstitutionality appeals filed by the PP Executive.
The City Council has already incorporated the empty apartment into the municipal housing park, from which it has expropriated the right to use after checking that it had been empty for more than two years.
Barcelona expropriates empty apartment bank owned
The use of this house has been expropriated when two conditions are met: it is located in an area of "high demand and great need" -specifically in the Besòs neighborhood, in the Sant Martí district- and was registered in the housing registry empty of the Agency of the Housing of Catalonia.
The expropriation of the use is carried out after concluding a procedure that consists of four phases: the consistory checks if the floor is in the empty housing register, observes the census, claims the certificates of water consumption and finally carries out a municipal inspection to certify that it is not inhabited.
The City Council has relied on this case in Article 15 of Law 4/2016, which allows the expropriation of the right of temporary use of a home for a period of between four and ten years; Barcelona has opted on this occasion to expropriate the use for the maximum time allowed by the standard.
Martin has also indicated that there are seven other procedures of this type underway that affect homes owned by Caixabank, BBVA, Sareb and Bankia.
On the other hand, the consistory of the Catalan capital has sanctioned, applying article 5.2 of Law 24/2015, to a society for initiating the eviction of a family in the Raval neighborhood without offering a social rent; it is a breach of the regulations classified as "serious" that can lead to a fine of up to 90,000 euros.
Martin has detailed that there are currently up to 300 cases that the consistory is managing and that "a priori" should end with the offer of new social rents.
Technicians of the council have explained that in the register of empty homes now have about a thousand floors and that the penalties applied to large owners for the breach of regulations has reached a total of 165,000 euros that have ended up in the municipal coffers, with other procedures in process that can add "more than 500,000 euros" more.
"The objective that pursues us is not the sanction. We want the right to housing to be guaranteed, "said Martín, who has been inaugurated this morning as a councilor before the media.