Urbagencia agrees with representatives of Maricarmen to return to her apartment after eviction

Urba Gestión, owner of the Maricarmen apartment, reached an agreement this Monday with the representatives of the 87-year-old woman, who was evicted five days ago, to return her home, confirmed Ana de Miguel, CEO of the housing company of the Madrid City Council. After more than four hours of meeting between the owners, the lawyer and relatives of Maricarmen and the Municipal Housing and Land Company (EMVS), which has acted as mediator, the company has accepted that the person who was a tenant of that Retiro apartment for seven decades returns. The Tenants' Union also participated in the meeting, which had asked to be present in the negotiations and has warned that the camping in Puerta del Sol will continue: "This goes further." Now Maricarmen herself needs to say that she accepts the conditions.

Faced with social and media pressure, Urbagestion proposed “urgently” last Friday to transfer, rather than sell, the apartment to the EMVS so that it could rent it to Maricarmen at an affordable price through the so-called Reviva plan. The municipal company, on which the program depends, rejected the proposal because the house does not meet the requirements.

One of the conditions, in this and other City Council housing programs, is that the home is free of encumbrances, but in this case, the owners have a mortgage, explained an EMVS spokesperson. And Urba Gestión indicated in a statement that they could not cancel it “economically or registry-wise at this time.” In addition, the Reviva plan works with an allocation system, with an already established order and with people already on the waiting list for affordable rent.

After the refusal, the Madrid City Council offered to mediate between the company and the representatives of Maricarmen, and this materialized at this Monday's meeting. Everything has been managed through the Rental Intermediation Service, a program coordinated by the EMVS and involves certain guarantees for owners - non-payment and free home insurance, for example - and tenants, who will not pay more than 40% of their net income for the home.

Urbagencia bought the Retiro apartment in 2018 for a ridiculous price for the area precisely because Maricarmen lived in it. With a pension of about 1,400 euros, she has never stopped paying rent, old rent, and bills, around 500 euros a month in total. In 2020, the company told him that he had to leave the house, because the contract had already been subrogated twice. And since then they had not accepted any of the proposals they had received - from the Administration, from individuals, from cultural personalities - to either pay the difference in rent (they asked for 1,600 euros) or buy the apartment. “It is the first time in six years that the property has sat down to negotiate and is willing to do so,” said lawyer Duro before entering the meeting.