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Andalusia Fines Sareb With €120.000 For Impairing Social Function of Its Properties

21/10/2014 – Expansion

The Public Works and Housing Department of the Andalusia Territorial Office led by Elena Cortes (IULV-CA, pictured), has penalized Sareb, Spain’s bad bank, with a 120.000 euro fine for ‘impeding administrative measures necessary for ensuring social funcion of the subsidized properties’.

This is the first sanction imposed by the Council in the framework of the Law for Social Function of Housing, commonly known as ‘the anti-eviction law‘, a regulation that obliges financial entities to provide the public administration with an inventory of the subsidized units in their possession.

According to the department led by Elena Cortes, Sareb has got 911 subsidized homes in Andalusia, while the bad bank maintains it owns only 98 units of this sort in that region. The fine arising from not meeting the requirement to register the properties in the municipal books could amount to €11.7 million in the second set of preceedings.

Mrs. Cortes insists that ‘no matter who the owner is, all subsidized properties must be placed at the disposal of families in need who look for them in local registries’. She pointed out ‘the extreme severity’ of the deed of Sareb that said the basis of the accusation on the part of the Andalusian authorities were ‘totally false’ as that was just an estimated number. Then, she asked, ‘how a law can be based on estimated figures’?

Moreover, in her view, ‘the Government of Spain has partially suspended the law in order to protect Sareb in line with the number of properties in its ownership. In other words, the Constitutional court was deceived to enforce the precautionary suspension of the regulation’.

Finally, the Public Works Department reminds that the Law on Social Housing has not been entirely questioned but so have been only several precepts, such as penalizations for the entites that hold empty homes for more than 6 months or the temporary expropriations of the dwelling use to avoid evictions of families at the risk of social exclusion.

Original article: Expansión 

Translation: AURA REE