Break the deck, the right way. The insomnia of Juanjo Hernández Riesco, resident of the punished Ciutat Meridiana neighborhood of Barcelona, is over. “We turned the situation around, I saw myself on the street,” he sighs. He is 56 years old and since the real estate crisis broke out he has lived almost permanently at the risk of losing his house: he has mortgaged himself, he has remained unemployed and can no longer pay, he has sold the apartment to the bank in exchange for maintaining a social rent… The apartment has changed hands up to five times in the real estate jungle and some time ago Juanjo lost the status of vulnerability which allowed him to have a social rent in exchange for a small salary increase in his job as a cook in a school, up to 1,200 euros. In April and May, Juanjo escaped two evictions that were blocked at the last minute. Literally: the first time because hundreds of neighbors and activists gathered; the second, committing to purchase the apartment. But I shouldn’t give up. What saved it was a pioneering solution born from an agreement between the Tenants Union and the Sostre Cívic housing cooperative.
The cooperative purchased the apartment, financed with a loan from the Catalan Institute of Finance subsidized by the Generalitat Building Agency; and Juanjo has become a member and will pay a user fee while living in Sostre Cívic, who will own it for 75 years, when the apartment will be integrated into the rented public swimming pool. The purchase is integrated into the ICF program for the acquisition and rehabilitation of housing to increase public assets.
The parties announced this on Thursday. It was planned to do so with a celebratory press conference in the Red Square of Ciutat Meridiana, due to its symbolism: with the neighborhood symbolizing evictions in the background and in the square where the bank offices where the neighbors took out mortgages were located. But due to heavy rains, it had appeared online.
“I’m very happy, but be careful: if it hadn’t been for the struggle, my alternative would have been to end up retired or rent a room”, says Juanjo, an activist in the Union for years and underlines: “The solution did not come from the administration, nor from the owners (the Divarian management company originally linked to BBVA). It was the struggle and the agreement between the Union and the cooperative. And my case should not be the exception, but the rule, because the people who work and pay taxes must have house, yes or yes. The 55-meter apartment was purchased for 54,200 euros and it is planned to invest another 49,000 to rehabilitate it and improve its energy efficiency.
The Union noted that “Juanjo’s case demonstrates that there are real alternatives to speculation: collective, community and effective”, adding that the purchase “is not intended to be an isolated case, but rather a replicable strategy”. “Cooperatives and unions, with public tools, can expand the accessible stock and protect the right to housing of people who live in rent,” they added.
On behalf of the Sostre Cívic cooperative, its spokesperson, José Téllez, explains that this pioneering purchase resulting from the agreement with the Union is not the usual formula. “Sostre Cívic in other cases has purchased the homes of entire communities” who risk losing their apartments when they are acquired by investment companies. “We are studying the fighting blocks in Barcelona located by the Union,” he explains. In the case of Ciutat Meridiana, where cases like that of Juanjo are often repeated, it is not excluded that the operation could be replicated. “We acted in a particular case, but if the public line of enabling resources were expanded, cooperatives could provide solutions to buildings in conflict,” he says: “When there are public tools, cooperatives can provide management, the Union the experience of struggle and negotiation, in specific buildings or in areas where there is a lot of conflict.” The cooperative owns the homes it buys or promotes, so members live there permanently and at an affordable price.
Juanjo tells the story of the two eviction attempts last spring. The first, the judicial procession left (towards another launch planned in the same neighborhood) “due to lack of police personnel” to carry it out. The second was almost executed, despite having signed a deposit agreement. Imagine how surreal it would be if I had been left on the street with Divarian wanting to sell and me wanting to buy.” “But I live hand to mouth, I have no savings, always in tow,” he says. He trusts that the reform will allow him to set up a space to play with his niece and asks: “Please, say that the institutions should give more coverage to cooperatives.”
The Ciutat Meridiana neighborhood is in last place for average family income in the city, adds waves of migration and symbolizes the tsunami of evictions when the real estate bubble burst. Executions here did not stop even during the pandemic moratorium. Nobody counts the executions that took place in the area, where many of the emptied floors were occupied, so the cycle of executions never ends.
An eviction carried out in Granollers in full alert due to heavy rain
The Socialist Construction Union reported Thursday that a family from Granollers (Barcelona) was evicted amid high alert due to heavy rain. The local branch of the Granollers Union explained that “an hour before the scheduled time” and while the father of the family, Mohammed, accompanied his children to school, the Mossos d’Esquadra carried out the eviction “leaving them on the street despite the Civil Protection alarm for heavy rain and risk of flooding and without offering them an alternative”. Union activists tried to mediate to prevent the eviction, according to the organization, which assured that there were police charges and the arrest of a union activist. Regional police sources explained that the evictions “are carried out on orders of the police” and explained that the person detained did not belong to the family affected by the eviction, but rather an activist and who “attacked a police officer”. For their part, sources from the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia stressed that the launch was carried out because “officially there were no suspended activities”, despite the alert.
