Two new social housing promotions are available on the open market. Over a hundred years ago, at some point, they felt safe in a safe house and were ready to leave home. Tenants of two buildings located in the Ensanche de Vallecas neighborhood, in the Villa de Vallecas district, have come together to denounce the “silent” process of deprivation that has begun to take place and – as confirmed by the Cadena SER adelantaba and these memoirs – that Fundación la Caixa is selling these properties that are being sold to an investment fund. Designed for social rents between 400 and 600 euros.
The recipe is not new. “It’s about getting us off the coast of speculation,” confirms David Jiménez, 55, who has lived for 18 years in one of the floors of these buildings. David moved in 2007 with his seven-year-old son, right after the Caixa Social Action Program opened these two developments in Vallecas, located on Mazaterone 8-10 and on Fresno de Cantespino 1-3, to provide housing for children under 35 and over 65 who have difficulties accessing the villa.
“To die on a floor, you had to adapt to some requirements, and get the maximum income,” comments David, who currently pays around 400 euros for his work and suffers from a heart condition due to which he is recognized as having a 49% disability. Little by little, they came up with a vision of 220 identical floors in which these blocks are located: 45 square meters, one dwelling, low-cost materials, and a practical design. “The Fundación has never made it difficult for us to renew contracts,” he comments.
Until 2022 they began to refuse to do so with those who could not win. “This happened a long time ago, but there were invisible losses because we did not enter the rest of the years because we did not extend the contract,” explains Maria Diaz, another of the affected vehicles. The situation became tumultuous when in August of this year they read a letter signed by InmoCaixa, the real estate company that manages the floors, informing them that they would not renew the contracts that had since expired. No explanation, no details.
A Fundación spokesperson answers: “This is a promotion whose VPO has expired and, therefore, lapsed on the open market. Tenants are always notified in a timely and formal manner, and they always adhere to the terms of the contracts signed by both parties.” He adds that while they have worked for decades to facilitate access to housing for vulnerable groups, in recent years they have “redirected their strategic lines of action, focusing their efforts on social programmes” such as employment, child poverty, supporting mayors or caring for people with advanced diseases.
New letter
In October, they began receiving another letter, in this case from the company to which Fundación had sold the flooring, Mosaic Propco SLU, informing them that contracts now depended on it. With this news, hope has become less and less can be renewed, and many of them believe that what is happening to the fund is that the contracts are replaced by another company so that it does not carry the image of breaching this commitment to the house.
The affected platform Hipoteca (PAH) joined these tenants in its fight: “After receiving subsidies and subsidies to build social work, Caixabank now continues to pursue increasing its interest through speculation with the sale of funds. At the same time, it uses its fight for poverty or for childhood through its foundation as washed out, threatening to let down people from families with minors, the elderly and poor resources.”
They currently calculate that there are only 110 of them still signing a contract for the InmoCaixa period. At least four of them have a “housing emergency” and another 40 are due to be delivered in the next few months. David is among the first, as his contract was for those “silent ones” that expired in 2022 and he denied an extension. He told the court in his case that he had given reason at the first moment for considering that the institution had acted badly without extending it, but that decision had been appealed and is still being implemented. “I keep paying the rent and miscellaneous accounts every month. I never have to return a receipt and I never say anything bad, it’s an outlier,” says the old man, who fears he will be the next person to be permanently evicted because of his situation.
Maria’s contract expires in April 2026, after she has spent 12 years living on this floor, but she says there are people who take longer than those who make false promises. “There is the Enterra plant, the first, intended for mayors and those who did not want to go there until they wanted to,” he explains.
Segun informed the Fundación with these memos that in cases where vulnerability is believed to exist “they always work manually and in a coordinated manner with the administration to look for housing alternatives,” but they have emphasized in the past that at the moment none of them has offered a solution.
“It seems rare to us that if the floors are not part of the fund, they keep saying they are offering us an alternative. This just refutes the idea that the new owner is a company open to hiding speculation,” says David. In both buildings there are seasonal rental homes that rent for around €1,100, two and three times the cost of social rent, the researchers reported. They also draw attention to the fact that there are some in sales worth around 250 thousand euros, although they are “very modest living spaces without a garage”.
“Unfortunately, this situation is not new because in Madrid, where Almeida is ruled by an urban planner who works in the service of speculators,” says Eduardo Robinho, mayor of Mas Madrid. “The mayor works for a city for the rich, for tourists, but the housing emergency affecting workers gives exactly the same thing.”
More Madrid met with its neighbors and agreed to submit a proposal to the plenary session of Villa de Vallecas in this country that would urge the Empresa Municipal de Vivienda y Suelo de Madrid (EMVS) to negotiate with the current owners to acquire these houses and include them in the available public rental park. Moreover, they will complain that the eviction process for the elderly has been paralyzed in the process for those who have terminated their contracts and that the district council’s social services are helping those who find themselves in vulnerable situations.
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