Ada Colau launches her "star" law to expropriate homes from large investment funds

The alternative left agitates the pre-campaign to once again place housing as a central axis of debate and to make it the great lever for mobilizing the vote. Ada Colau presented this Friday a law to expropriate homes from large investment funds. The Frente Amplio labels the proposal as one of its "star measures" for the general elections.

From Malaga, and next to a block of apartments purchased by an Israeli fund, the leader of the Frente Amplio has detailed that her proposal for a Law of Expropriation of Housing from Private Corporate Owners would be executed "progressively" in "three phases" on the residential stock of large owners.

In the first of these phases, the funds that hold more than a thousand homes would be expropriated, such as Blackstone or CaixaBank. In a second, it would be addressed to the owners of more than 700 homes. And finally, in a third phase, companies that own more than 50 houses would be entered.

The objective of the Frente Amplio is to "recover" these homes through expropriation at lower prices than they would be in the real estate market and to facilitate affordable access to them. The candidacy has explained that the measure would exclusively affect "corporate owners" and that it would leave families "out."

"With this issue we are not going to be lukewarm. We are going to the root of the problem. We are going for the ultra-rich and the speculators in defense of the working social majority," Colau stressed in the presentation of the initiative, where he demanded that the Frente Amplio have enough strength in votes to "go much further than what has been done so far."

For the candidate, cities like Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga have laid out the "red carpet" for the "vulture funds" to do business with housing and that this has to end. "They come to our cities to buy homes in bulk, as if they were apples and what they do is speculate and set abusive prices," he denounced.

The Frente Amplio has indicated that, in addition to this expropriation law, all urban properties and residential land of Sareb must be "compulsorily assigned to the public housing stock." The candidacy justifies that this company was created to absorb the real estate assets of the banks rescued with public money and that, for this reason, now, "it has to return to everyone in the form of housing."