Casa 47 Rentals: Neoliberal Contracts & Public Housing Future

Beyond Rental Insurance and the funds, the list of companies that opt for the future management of Casa 47 includes large evictors, contractors responsible for the emptying of Sareb and opportunistic social companies

The Plan Sareb campaign denounces that the private management of the future housing stock will bring insecure contracts and control of tenants

Housing organizations are committed to universal, free and quality housing, and the end of contracts with mediators

The publication in the press, last week, of the list of companies that are applying to manage the future public housing company, Casa 47, has provoked a logical reaction of indignation due to the presence of companies that defraud tenants such as Rent Insurance and large investment funds. From the Plan Sareb campaign, in which we bring together housing organizations and unions and hundreds of current Sareb tenants, we want
denounce that the list confirms our previous complaints about the private, neoliberal and opportunistic nature of this future management.

In addition to secure rentals, the list includes current large evictors in the financial sector such as Servihabitat and Solvia, law firms responsible for evictions from Sareb itself (Gestimed, M&P Abogados), or, in a particularly scandalous loop, the opaque conglomerate Ahora Asset Management, to which Sareb itself sold 450 homes, mostly inhabited, in 2018. In addition, companies from management of public services, including those with a “social” label such as Provivienda or the Habitatge foundation, run by the former head of housing for the Catalan Generalitat before and after the real estate bubble, Carme Trilla.

Through our experience as current tenants of Sareb, beyond the specific examples and which company or companies end up keeping the lots, we know that the outsourced management model is in the same package as contracts with fraudulent clauses, arbitrary measures of social control against occupants and tenants and the evictions, supply cuts, forced relocations and negligence that have already characterized the management of Sareb. It is enough to read the CV of the aspiring companies and ask yourself a simple question: why would they be necessary if the rentals were truly for life, as the government has announced? What would be its management beyond the rotation of tenants, a model to which its contracts necessarily lead us with hidden rent increases and the imposition of so-called social support?

Against the discourse of the progressive government, the Sareb-Casa 47 operation confirms that the new public housing stock arrives late, was born with original defects, has been the result of improvisation and the plunder of all types of actors and mediators of what could have been a large social housing stock. That is why we claim: the housing stock exists as a public park because we have recovered, inhabited and defended it all these years. Decommodifying housing means moving towards a universal, free and quality housing stock, under the control of the housing organizations themselves and not opportunistic companies.

About the aspiring companies

Served: This is the company jointly owned by Caixabank (20%) and the Texan fund Lone Star (80%). It is the current company in charge of Sareb’s rental contracts, primarily responsible, therefore, for the current model of fraudulent contracts, evictions, forced relocations and supply cuts in entire developments. Its inclusion, far from being anecdotal, represents confirmation of the interest of a part of the financial-real estate sector in the management of the so-called affordable rental market niche. With the same proportion, Caixabank and Lone Star are owners of Coral Homes, a real estate fund responsible for thousands of evictions, some of them also in blocks recovered by the housing movement.

Solve: The former Sabadell real estate agency was responsible for Sareb’s rents until September 2022. Today it is part of Intrum, an international fund that continues to pick up the last remains of the mass evictions of the past decade, and also specializes in the management of bank defaults. The Sogeviso-solvia conglomerate, with Sareb’s current director of social housing management and institutional relations Pau Pérez de Acha at the helm, was the “inventor” of the conditional rental social support model that was transplanted to Sareb and that should not be part of the future public housing stock.

Now Asset Management: conglomerate of opaque real estate companies, based in Madrid, and buyer of 450 Sareb homes in 2018. Their eviction methods, which still affect old Sareb homes recovered by the housing movement, include the actions of an alleged social mediation front company, which offers money before the eviction.

Rental Insurance: The rental management company is well known for complaints from tenant unions, which have earned it a fine from the general directorate of consumption.

Dovalue: the main representative, along with Solvia herself, of the debt collection and property recovery sector that now intends to retain the rental management of Casa 47. Its main client in Spain is the Santander bank, for whom it continues to act as a foreclosure collector. He tried to stay with Servihabitat after the threat of its sale.

M&P Ledesma and Associates: current office responsible for Sareb mortgage foreclosures. Therefore, responsible for the evictions of hundreds of tenants of bankrupt companies that were in Sareb’s auction portfolio.

Savills: collections manager, responsible for at least one media eviction attempt: that of the struggling block on General Lacy Street, Delicias neighborhood, Madrid. The con ict is still open at the time of bidding for the Sareb/Casa 47 lots.

To be provided: company of the so-called third sector, originally a promoter linked to the Employee Home Foundation. He has been specializing in the neoliberal outsourcing of areas of social services, especially in Madrid, both under the Carmena administration and with the current Almeida team. Currently, its accompaniment, mediation and relocation programs include eviction processes and the rotation of people “intervened” by its programs. The Housing Law grants eviction privileges to both public housing companies and their outsourced third sector managers.

Habitatge3: social intervention company and promoter of cooperative housing, emergency housing, etc., promoted by the director of Habitatge of the Catalan Generalitat between 2004 and 2011, Carme Trilla. Close to the PSC, Trilla has publicly demonstrated against the mandatory social rent measures achieved by the housing movement in Catalonia, as well as the rent cap measures. Beyond this, the inclusion of the third sector in the management of Casa 47 would confirm the strong role of this type of companies in the management of housing for households considered vulnerable, and their rent control interventions for the poor.

Other companies: The list is completed with more law firms specialized in evictions and debt recovery and real estate (Procuradores Gestimed), expanding family real estate companies (Guinot Prunera), funds developing an affordable housing portfolio (Emerald Impact), public services outsourcing companies not included in the third sector (Ingeus-Fantastic and Serveo-La factoría). Finally, the company Property Technology, which boasts of its incorporation of technological processes into real estate management.