<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - vulture fund]]> 10 <![CDATA["Where do we put ourselves with this money?": a vulture fund offers 6,000 euros to Susana so that she leaves her home]]>

"What can you do with 6,000 euros?". That is the question from Susana, a resident of the Rafal neighborhood, regarding the offer made by the fund that is now demanding she leave her home. "To them, 6,000 euros is nothing, and they offer us this in exchange for our home, as if we could do anything with that amount," she criticizes. The amount is not even enough to find a decent alternative housing option. Now, she and her partner are facing a judicial proceeding that has been dragging on for years and has changed actors with the successive sales of the property.

]]> <![CDATA[The machine for spitting out poor people]]> The appearance on screens of some faces of victims of real estate speculation has caused, at the very least, discomfort and the desire to formulate some type of response, both on the part of society and the political class. Everyone has heard of the case of Maricarmen, an eighty-seven-year-old woman from Madrid, who suffers from poor health and economic precariousness, and who has been evicted from the apartment where she had lived for more than seventy years. There was also another brutal and disproportionate action by the Police, who charged against the protesters who were demonstrating for Maricarmen's eviction with a brutality that recalled the one they exhibited in Palma on July 27th, at the end of the massive demonstration called by the Platform Less Tourism Less Life. Mobilizing in favor of the right to housing or to demand the rationalization of the tourism sector is not prohibited for the moment, but it is greeted, from the outset, with baton blows by unworthy police officers who beat up citizens who are exercising another fundamental right, that of demonstration. Afterwards, if they find themselves in the position of having to give any type of explanation, this terrible Police force resorts to a cowardly and lying victimhood, according to which they had allegedly 'defended' themselves from supposed 'threats' from the protesters.In Catalonia, in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, the death of Olga, a 54-year-old woman with two daughters, one of them a minor, who could not bear to lose her home and committed suicide, has come to light. And here we have seen the face of Pilar López Cabrera, a 65-year-old woman who explained at the Palma City Council plenary session, through tears, that after losing the home where she lived – on Joan Crespí street in the city – and having contributed for forty years as a hospitality worker, she has been left on the street and has had to spend this last summer sleeping in her car, showering at the Ciutat Jardí showers and having to take care of personal hygiene in hidden places in large shopping centers. You can read about it in Héctor Rubio's chronicle in ARA Balears. These are not extreme cases, but rather much more common than they might seem in our environment. To some, they may seem like marginal characters, but they are people as central as anyone else could be. No one is marginal; the margins are simply the spaces of injustice and existential torture that our economic model reserves for those who cannot cope – with money – with the pressure of speculators.Pilar Gómez Cabrera insisted on emphasizing that she is “Spanish”, assuming that her nationality, the fact of having been born in Spain, should protect her from injustice. Maricarmen and Olga also are or were Spanish. Faced with vulture funds and unbridled capitalism, however, nationalities are worth nothing: without money to pay the prices of speculation, we all become ‘immigrants’, because we are all reduced to the condition of being poor. And this thing we call ‘economic system or model’, which is nothing more than the law of the strongest and the one with the fewest scruples, swallows, chews, and spits out the poor. The first thing to understand is that we are all exposed to it. And at the same time –we must insist on it as much as necessary– that the right to decent housing is a constitutional right, and as such it must prevail over the right to property and the free market. Naturally, it is necessary to legislate to prevent vulture funds from continuing to trade with people's lives and basic rights. And naturally, it is necessary to restrict the purchase of housing by companies and foreign investors. In fact, it is urgent.

]]> <![CDATA[MORE accuses the PP of protecting vulture funds and promoting, even more, real estate speculation]]>

MÉS per Palma denounces that the Partit Popular government in Cort has decided to open the door to companies and investment funds being able to buy subsidized housing. This decision, in their opinion, turns protected housing into "a new business for large speculators and directly harms the citizens of Palma". As they detailed at a press conference, until now, this subsidized housing was reserved for families who needed a home to live in.

]]> <![CDATA[The Balearic Islands embrace Ayuso's housing model: more market and less protection]]>

The PP's decision to allow companies and investment funds to buy housing at a regulated price is the latest example of the change in housing policy model in the Balearic Islands, driven by Marga Prohens's government, with political role models like Isabel Díaz Ayuso's Community of Madrid. The Popular Party has opted to increase supply and private initiative over protected housing, a strategy that the left and experts consulted by ARA Balears have criticized.

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