Several, a cordoned portal, two court officials and a group of neighbors shouting at the doors. The scene that is repeated in the streets of Madrid allows to locate with the naked eye where there is a neighbor who will go to the novelty this Tuesday is that it was not a family, but seven, those simultaneously in the same block of housing. Specifically of the number 12, 14 and 16 of the El Yesero de Vallecas street, where this morning they were whose homes belong to the Sareb, the bad bank created by the State and that on Tuesday gave a twist to its last name. It was the third attempt and the final.
At 12 in the morning, while on the street, some thirty people protested megaphone in hand before what they consider an “immorality” of the housing bank created within the framework of the rescue of the Spanish financial entities that broke after the outbreak of the real estate bubble. “Pedro Sánchez who promised to make the SAREB the largest public housing park thus accelerates the sale of its best housing park while continuing its realsojo policy in uninhabitable houses, located outside the urban nuclei and with illegal rentals,” they denounce from the PAH of Vallecas, a platform that fights evictions in the neighborhood.
It rained copiously on Tuesday, but Alejandro watched from the street in shirt sleeves everything that happened to him: the police deployed, the movement of court officials, the Samur truck … had gone down to the garage, but the police do not let him return home. His sister and her nieces, in the housing next door, did not want to leave a house in which he has been living for five years and for which he paid 500 euros of rent. Also on the street, Carlos, with more than ten years living in the 3rd of El Yesero 14, has just stayed with his last belongings on the sidewalk.
Of the seven homes that Sareb recovered on Tuesday, four were empty the previous day and three others are from families that follow the hustle in front of the portal. “It has not been possible to negotiate. The Sareb does not respond to the phone and the atmosphere in the building has become disappointed, ”acknowledges Alejandro, from the 1stb. We have not left the houses before because until the last moment we expected Sareb to negotiate a rent, but with us they have not wanted for the campaign that other neighbors have made against us, ”summarizes.
In this block of buildings of Vallecas the Sareb had 27 homes. Those who lived there were neither squatted nor kicked at the door. They paid the monthly rent until the real estate agency broke and entered a legal limbo. The Sareb reached an agreement with several neighbors for the payment of a social rental (for an amount not exceeding 30% of its income) but not with these seven neighbors evicted, mainly Colombians and Venezuelans. The reason? The conflict they have with other neighbors has led to the limit.
One of the most belligerent, Carmen, denounces that they are loud, that make parties at night and leave the dirty pool. “The scandal they make is unbearable, this summer left crystals in the common areas of the pool and threaten us,” he explains. “Simply, classism,” adds Alejandro. “They don’t love us here because the price of their floors devalates.” The fact is that the neighborhood conflict has been rising in tone and from the tenant platforms argue that Sareb is paying attention to these arguments to get them to leave and put the homes for sale in portals as an idealist with the participation of vulture funds to which its sale has been commissioned, denounces Diego Sanz de la Pah de Vallecas.
SAREB argues that before executing an eviction they carry out a protocol that includes up to four visits and dialogue with affected families. When it comes to vulnerable people or who have signed a contract with “an exploiting company”, for example, “if they collaborate and provide documentation,” they point out, the social rental program starts. But, if they don’t, “you have to move on with eviction.” According to Sareb, “for the judge to allow launching, or there is no accredited vulnerability, or there is no collaboration.” Collaboration, however, is a term that lends itself to ambiguity and adds darkness to an entity that is unknown to the exact number of homes that it controls, with a figure that ranges between 30,000 and 50,000 homes.
Formally, the mandate of the Sareb is “to manage and liquidate the deteriorated assets from the entities and thereby repay the debt that Sareb issued with the endorsement of the State,” says its website. From the associations in defense of the tenants, they denounce that the real objective of these homes is the sale. According to Celia Otero, in the front row of the concentration against the Macrodesahucio “Sareb is pressing people to leave the floors and can be sold through questionable practices, especially for a public entity,” he says while helping to put in the street some of the last objects of the neighbors who will not return to the El Yesro street.
