'Squats' in public housing: from 'narcopisos' to illegal housing trafficking

• Courts. The Attorney General's Office issues instructions to stop "with the greatest immediacy" the 'squats'

The

problem

does not only affect private homes.

The Valencian public housing stock is just one example of how illegal occupations can also become a real headache for administrations.

In the case of the Generalitat Valenciana, practically

.

Specifically, 1,298 out of a total of 14,000. The figure is of such magnitude that the annual accounts of the Valencian Housing and S

uelo (EVHA) - in charge of managing the floors of the Generalitat - point to the illegal occupation as "one of the serious problems of the public park."

The management report for the year 2019 warns that only during that year 170 new

of public housing.

A situation that, according to EVHA sources,

The impossibility of evicting

during those months and the reduction in surveillance explain this increase.

To the point that EVHA itself has also had to denounce the

.

“There are people who illegally occupy public apartments and sell the keys.

The eviction process becomes complicated then, because when the judicial procedure begins, we find that there is someone who claims to have signed a contract, ”these sources explain. The paradox is that

, and whose owner, Rubén Martínez Dalmau, has had to say that "the Generalitat will have zero tolerance for fraudulent and illicit use of public housing."

And it is not for less, since EVHA itself points out in its management report that illegal occupations of social housing "violate the rights of people who are registered in the list of housing applicants and, therefore, with the right to access a property. ”According to the PP recently revealed, there are

.

But, in addition,

"They impede the adaptation and rehabilitation of the houses, and pose a risk due to lack of security for their occupants and the rest of the neighborhood community," according to the EVHA. For example, this same year Alcoy had to dismantle two

, that is, two houses in the public park that had been

Y

.

Their repair cost the public coffers 40,000 euros. The repair of the houses is one of the obstacles that EVHA faces.

The entity recognizes that it is now that the rehabilitation of all public housing has been undertaken.

Till the date,

.

"Is for this that I know

», Argue the same sources.

If in 2019 some 300 homes were rehabilitated to be awarded, in 2020 more than 500 have already been repaired, which gives an idea of ​​the volume of public flats that were in practice unusable. The other front that is presented to the EVHA is what to do with the houses

by vulnerable families, and even more so when they are in the orbit of a poor department.

In this sense, a

to work side by side with social services and not leave anyone on the street without a housing alternative, because here another problem appears: the bulk of illegally occupied homes are because of

... A fact: of the 1,298 public housing units

, some between 950 and 1,000 have been since before 2015. "All of these are likely to see their situation regularized because they are historical or structural squats," they emphasize in the EVHA. This means that the Generalitat aspires to regularize three out of four public housing

, with the argument precisely that the eviction of these families would leave the majority sleeping on the street without any alternative:

.

A good part of these flats are also located in marginal neighborhoods, and all this is reflected, on the other hand, in the accounts of the public entity.

The audit of the Generalitat's Intervention itself questions that the EVHA, in the real estate investment section, includes "dwellings destined for exploitation under lease that are currently in the process of being evicted due to being illegally occupied", being their net value accounting as of December 31, 2019

.

However, the audit insists, "the entity has not recorded impairment of said assets, in the absence of a clear expectation of when these homes will recover and return to generate future cash flows, as well as an estimate of the necessary repairs to put the houses back in conditions of use. ”In other words, the managing entity of the public park has not contemplated the deterioration of these properties due to the uncertainty that their eviction implies.

And in figures, the audit gives them a net book value of more than 11 million euros.

Here, in numbers, the impact of

in the public housing stock.

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