Urbagencia Desarrollo e Inversión has proposed “urgently” this Friday to the Madrid City Council to incorporate the apartment on Calle del Alcalde Sainz de Baranda, 46, into the Reviva program, so that Maricarmen can return to the home with a “stable and affordable” rent, according to a statement advanced by El Economista and to which EL PAÍS has had access. The company assures that the property is not for sale and that it has been made available to the Municipal Land Housing Company (EMVS), to whom it would transfer the home and which for now has not responded to the commercial company, and to the municipal Social Services to process this formula or another alternative that the administrations consider more viable.
"The objective is to coordinate with the City Council, and where appropriate, with other administrations, a solution that allows Mrs. Maricarmen Abascal to return to housing with a stable and affordable housing alternative. The company makes itself available to the EMVS and the municipal Social Services so that the proposal can be resolved in the shortest possible time," they state in the statement. The EMVS confirms that it has received the offer, although for now it does not provide more details, and the company's lawyer assures this newspaper that the City Council has not yet responded to them. If the proposal is accepted, it will remain to be determined how it would be carried out, under what conditions and when Maricarmen, who is still admitted to the hospital, would return home.
The company insists that the Retiro apartment, which they once bought for 247,000 euros, is not for sale: "The solution that the company has decided to promote is the proposal that it presents to the City Council today through the Reviva program or the alternative that the City Council or, where appropriate, other Public Administrations could consider more feasible." The text does not specify what these alternatives would consist of and the Tenants Union assures that neither the organization nor Maricarmen's lawyer have so far received information about the announced proposal. "At the moment we cannot confirm it. For us it is not true because we have not received anything," comments a union spokesperson.
The Reviva Plan is a program of the Madrid City Council to recover empty privately owned homes. The owner - in this case Urba Gestión - temporarily transfers the home to the EMVS so that it can rent it at an affordable price. On their website they explain that the owner will have “a series of guarantees and advantages” and that, “regardless of whether the house has a tenant or not,” they will receive a monthly rent. The owner does not lose ownership of the property at any time. In a statement in January, the City Council reported that this initiative had at that time 200 empty homes that were going to be dedicated to affordable rentals.
With this program, the EMVS is responsible for renting the home, managing incidents, insurance, supplies and repairs. It also pays the ordinary community fees, the IBI from the following year and the garbage tax, it is explained in the bases of the plan. According to the document, the rent for each home is determined by the municipal housing company, which takes as a reference an independent appraisal and the market prices in the area. The tenant will not allocate more than 30% of their income to rent and community, and the minimum rent will be 450 euros per month.
Urba Gestión also confirms in the statement that it received a purchase proposal from the pianist James Rhodes – “without specifying the amount” – through two emails, but that “when those emails arrived, the launch had already occurred.” Other offers are not mentioned, such as that of a well-known writer, who proposed paying the rent, and other personalities from the world of culture, all of whom were rejected. They also indicate that these three days, the company has received “hundreds of massive emails that saturated its server and made it very difficult to respond to any communication.” 24 hours ago, the company sent another letter to the media in which they denied practically everything published so far regarding Maricarmen's eviction.
