• Politics. Offensive of PP, Cs and Vox against squatters and the "collusion" of Podemos

The Madrid City Council is going to create an anti-squatting office to advise neighboring communities on the measures they can take to combat the usurpation of houses and the problems of coexistence that it entails. The new body, dependent on the Territorial Coordination Area, will give residents "legal support" for conflict resolution.

The announcement was made this Friday by the Deputy Mayor of the capital, Begoña Villacís, accompanied by the delegate of Urban Development, Mariano Fuentes. Together they have also verified 'in situ' the demolition of a house in an advanced state of degradation in the district of Latina to avoid, precisely, that it could be illegally inhabited .

Both this type of preventive measures and the creation of the aforementioned office are included in an Anti-Squat Plan drawn up by the Madrid City Council and endowed with 1.5 million euros. This initiative includes the eviction of six buildings on the Paseo de la Dirección, in Tetuán, and the collapse of industrial buildings in Villaverde.

According to the latest report from the Government Delegation, prepared in 2018, there were almost 4,000 squatted houses in the region . The Madrid City Council has urged said body, which is now headed by José Manuel Franco, of the PSOE, to update the figure, to which a spokesman for the same responds that "the competition belongs to the Ministry of Housing of the Community of Madrid" .

In the Ministry of Housing, however, they only have figures of the properties that are part of their public assets - not private or municipal - that have been "assaulted by kicking in the door": since October 2019, when The Mesa contra la Okupación was established, 30 floors have been usurped , which represents an average of more than three a month.

Unsafety

"Squatting causes insecurity for legitimate owners and, above all, serious problems of coexistence," Villacís said in the act in which he announced the creation of the advisory office. "They manifest themselves in things like having the phone taken away, the handle or simply making life impossible for them," added the vice mayor.

Among the actions already carried out by the Urban Development Area so far in the legislature is the eviction of three industrial buildings in Villaverde where 43 people lived illegally and committed the crimes of human trafficking and drug trafficking and retail, according to Fuentes has pointed out. "We beg the rest of the administrations to also get their batteries on," the councilor has claimed.

From the Citizens wing in the municipal government of the coalition shared with the PP they have also requested that the law against squatters proposed by Inés Arrimadas's party in Congress be approved. The idea is for there to be a hardening of the crime of usurpation in the Penal Code and to speed up the expulsions of those who assault a house illegally and appropriate it.

Demolition in Latina

Villacís y Fuentes have witnessed the demolition of an infra-housing located on the Carabanchel-Aravaca highway, measuring almost 300 square meters, which will now be converted into a green area and a parking lot . The owners requested the expropriation by the City Council to prevent it from being squatted, since there are other properties in the vicinity in these conditions, as they specify in the Urban Development Area.

During the inspection of the property, the municipal services found the existence of "serious deficiencies in the structure of the building" that made the stability of the walls "very compromised". The degradation supposed "a high degree of insecurity in the public space".

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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