The purpose of this report is to analyse
the existing housing emergency in Spain from a human rights perspective. Specifically, we study the regulation of
foreclosures and evictions in terms of the legal commitments acquired by the State and the concrete
impact this has on the families affected.
The report consists of an introduction and
two large sections. The introduction describes the main characteristics of
urban and housing policy that have led to the current housing emergency.
The first section, for its part, opens
with an analysis of the role of the right to decent and adequate housing and of
the prohibition of arbitrary evictions in the Spanish constitutional system, in
international human rights law, and in the European Union. Then we look at the
basic policy guidelines that establish these rights, both at the level of the
State and the autonomous communities. In this section we include some responses
from the public administrations in reaction to the housing crisis and concrete
recommendations addressed to the Spanish State on the part of different
national and international bodies.
The second section aims to alleviate the
absence of official data on the profile of people affected by foreclosure procedures
and on the attitudes of different financial institutions in terms of this
problem. With this objective, we will present the results of 11,000 surveys
that reflect the concrete impact of the housing emergency on families and four
in-depth interviews with people connected to the Platform of Mortgage Victims
(Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca – PAH).
The report closes with a third section of conclusions and
recommendations addressed to the public authorities.
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