The inaccessible right to housing: between ownership, leasing, and intermediate tenancies

Abstract

In the consideration of the right to housing, multiple heterogeneous aspects converge without whose joint observation neither the relevance nor the substance of the right to housing can be fully understood, but which also allow us to gauge the complexity of the phenomenon of which they are an integral part. Housing constitutes an inaccessible objective for a good part of the citizens and those who see their access to it possible do so through the (triple) route of ownership, renting or, as the case may be, of the so-called intermediate tenancies, all of them not exempt from inconveniences at the time of their valuation, essentially for the owner of the property. In relation to the acquisition of ownership, currently faced with real estate occupation shielded by vulnerability, it turns out that the demarcation of the right of ownership, based on its social function, is limited by its essential content, already specified by the TC and which will again be specified when resolving the pending appeals against Law 12/2023, presented by the Executive as a panacea solution to the problem of the right to “decent and adequate housing” which the EC recognizes in article 47. In the field of lease access, the regulation of real estate leasing has also been legally revised, but reality shows that intervening, as intended, in the rental market is not the best way to solve the problem and, in view of the confrontation of arguments with ideological undertones that invades us, the most authoritative doctrine defends the convenience of not capping prices and renouncing the imposition of rules that tighten the scenario causing a constrained market, extremely regulated and markedly punitive. As for intermediate holdings, they are still presented as marginal possibilities, due to their spatial limitation and their scarce diffusion. This paper is devoted to reviewing these issues.