“What did they spend the budget on?”

“It has been decided to refuse the assistance because there is insufficient funds to grant and pay the aforementioned files,” said the letter that Juana received in the capital of Murcia and through which she discovered that she would not receive youth rental assistance in the Murcia region. Neither she nor the rest of the people who have been waiting for her for more than two years. According to the Murcian Ministry of Development, the state funds that financed this aid have been exhausted. The young woman says: “What did they spend the budget on? I know many people who asked for help, but no one got it.”

This support was launched in 2023, with the aim of paying up to 60% of the rent, with a maximum of 360 euros per month for housing and 180 for rooms. The application period had been open for about two years, until March 2025, but notification that the budget had been exhausted arrived on Wednesday.

The Director General of Housing, María Dolores Gil, insisted that the Directorate General of Housing “has been exploring various options for months to be able to process all the requests received, including the official request to the Ministry of Housing to supplement this item with the remainder of the rent bonus for young people.” They confirmed from Fomento that on the part of the ministry “there has always been a negative reaction.”

The ministry has not specified how many people have benefited from this support so far or how many people have been excluded from the process, but insists that the amount contributed under the government’s housing scheme was “miniscule”. The letter sent to applicants indicates that the amount of the next file to be awarded (€12,420.00) “will exceed the amount of the remaining appropriation.”

New call

Following this announcement, the Ministry committed to launching a new appeal “for two million euros of fully regional funds”: “This new line will allow the re-evaluation of files that could not be addressed due to the shortfall in state funds allocated for this assistance.”

“It’s not a money problem, it’s a management problem. Why would they want more money if they can’t spend it?” They ask the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda. From the Ministry, €26 million has been transferred to the Murcia region for a rent bonus for young people from 2022.

“Since the Vox consultant (Jose Manuel Pancorbo, in development) was there in 2023, they have not been able to launch these programs.” They also point out that the region has the financial independence to expand the funds allocated to these schemes, as Catalonia did in this case.

As the two organizations point out, the Council of Ministers has approved the proposal for the regional distribution of government financial aid for the Youth Rental Bonus for the year 2025. The amount amounts to 200 million euros, of which the Murcia region will receive 8.8 million euros, representing 4.40% of the total.

“Bizum” for the owner

Housing association spokesman Pablo Vidal said: “This type of assistance does not help solve the problem. It is a direct benefit to landlords. If you give me rental assistance, but do not set rental prices, the response of landlords and tenants will be to raise rents.”

This is exactly the case of Claudia, one of those affected by the denial of this assistance. When she visited the apartment where she has been living for two years for the first time, the landlord greeted her with a document explaining how to apply for rental assistance: “The price of the apartment is 650 euros with a garage, and the landlord split the amount between the house and the garage, so that I could get the assistance. My apartment at that time was not worth the 650 euros that the landlord wanted to charge me, but he insisted that with the assistance the rent would be 350.” elDiario.es.

Vidal emphasized that “many people asked for this and carried out life projects in line with that assistance and then realized that they had acquired a debt that we will now see how to solve.” “Although this support was only a patch, it is necessary at this moment. In other autonomous communities it is managed much better.”

A Housing Federation spokesman said: “The solution to this housing crisis cannot go through governments that favor it. It is extremely important to point out that in this whole situation, governments are not only not neutral, but are part of the political arm of employers in the property and financial industry.”

Regarding what happened in the region, Vidal does not rule out that the lack of funds is a “controlled maneuver”: “This is part of the Popular Party’s policy in housing, as is the case in education and health. Emptying public funds to transfer them to private funds.”

An “opaque” process.

The refusal – according to Fomento, temporary – of youth rental aid is the straw that broke the camel’s back for subsidies that the housing association described as “ambiguous” from the beginning: “It was characterized by administrative silence, because the applicants never received any response. They were simply told that the matter was being processed and that’s it,” denounced the union’s spokesman. Which both Joanna and Claudia confirm: “I asked for help in March 2024, and I have not received any kind of notification since then,” the former explained.

Claudia asked for help twice, the first time in March 2023, when she was rejected because she did not meet one of the requirements: “It was something I found out because I went to public works, and they told me they had no money left. Half a year ago, when I wanted to know the status of my second request, they told me they had run out of money again.”

Requesting the resignation of the advisor and “electoral assistance”

On Friday, the Socialist MP in the Regional Assembly, Miguel Ortega, called for the resignation of the Minister of Public Works, Jorge García Montoro, due to the prevention of aid from the youth rental bonus, whose providers have been waiting for more than two years for the regional administration to receive the funds allocated by the Government of Spain.

Podemos’ communications secretary for the region, Victor Ejiu, noted this morning that the regional government had left “hundreds of young people who asked for this help stranded.”

The Purple spokesman noted that it was in April 2023, a month before the regional elections, when the regional executive announced this call for assistance. Podemos demands that the credit be extended “to pay the salaries of young people who requested this assistance.” “Announcing future calls is not worth it. What we want is for Lopez Meras to pay now.”