Tools about empty housing in Spain. Comparative study

Abstract

The excessive amount of empty housing is a reality in our real-state park and
it involves some troubles of different nature: urban, social and economic, that the public
authorities have to face. During the worst years of the economic crisis, and still today, this
phenomenon contrasts with the vulnerability and social emergency suffered from a lot of
families that have lost their principal home due to an eviction. To overcome this situation,
ten regional governments have approved several laws about the social function of the
property, social emergency and access to housing, with measures of similar contents, to
mobilize the vacant housing units. This regulation contains measures to stimulate the
market, like the mediation in the rental housing market, but also enforcement measures
like fines or taxes on the property of vacant houses and even the compulsory rental or
temporal expropriation of unoccupied dwellings. These laws have been very controversial
and, in fact, they were brought to the Constitutional Court by the State which understood
that its national functions recognized by the Spanish Constitution, had been violated.
Nowadays the Constitutional Court has solved the judicial statements about Andalucía,
Navarra, Canarias, Cataluña y Valencia regulations, and has concluded about the
constitutionality of most of the precepts appealed but also certain state functions have
been confirmed, among them the possibility of developing a «housing law» that sets the
basic uniform conditions that guarantee the equality of all Spaniards. Due to this normative
production and the sentences issued, the paper studies the regional regulation since it is
very probable that the Court will solve the other issues in the same way although there are
new contents in some of the laws still pending judgment, which would require their own
express pronouncements.