Is he ‘divide and conquer‘ against ‘the The union makes the force‘, the Right to decent housing against him right to dispose of private property. In the Esquerra de l’Eixample these days the umpteenth game is being played between a large real estate holder and a community of neighbors, a meeting in which the latter start with a slight disadvantage: they have more to lose, which gives them, on the other hand, much more desire to fight. It happens that the residents of Casa Orsola, at the intersection with tactical urbanism of Calàbria with Consell de Cent, do not want to leave their homes because they have been there for many years, but it also happens that last October an SL bought the building with the intention of get the most out of itwhich, apparently, does not happen to keep the tenants foreverwho this Saturday, accompanied by some 200 people from the neighborhood, have marched through the surrounding streets to exhibit their “total unity against speculators“.
It is curious to observe how tactical urbanism, or the super apples, in this case, that of Sant Antoni, adapt to the vicissitudes of a demonstration. The bannerthe procession, the stragglers, the policeman who is in the lead sharing the position with his colleagues to cut off and open streets. It’s business as usual. But with fewer cars on the sidewalks, more terraces and more people walking or sitting on a bench, the protest takes on a higher point of ‘voyeurism’ citizen. It seems as if the stated cause is getting more attention. Therefore Carme Arcarazospokesman for Union of Llogateres, take advantage of any corner with bars to take the bus and explain, over and over again, the reasons that have led them to mobilize. “This could happen to you tomorrow,” she maintains, after briefly stating the facts.
sit down to negotiate
What could happen is that Lioness Investmentsor any other fund with fondness for brick, buy your building and decide not to renew any contract, no matter how long you have lived there for 20 or 30 years. It is not illegal, but it is, they denounce, “pure real estate speculation”, or a new pool of gentrification. That is why they ask, as has already been done with other more powerful firms, such as Blackstone or Goldman Sachs, that the owner of this fund, Albert Ollé Bartolomé, sits down to dialogue with the community as a block and not individually, as they say he is doing with the aim of dividing them. “But we had never met a block as cohesive as this“, points out Carme, who adds that the union is “essential to achieve a agreement Let them stay in their homes.”
Tono is one of those affected (the farm has 27 floors and seven are already empty). He lives alone and in October he received a burofax in which the new owner informed him that his rental contract (he has been in this modernist building for 10 years) was not going to be renewed. In December I had to hand over the keys and leave the house empty. She got a six-month extension and the problem has jumped to June. Like him, other residents have found the same letter in the mailbox. Some, as is the case of Josefa, according to the Sindicat de Llogateres, have received an offer to stay one more year. In the case of this older woman, pay 480 euros and they would allow him 12 more months in Casa Orsola at a rate of 800 euros per month.
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future green axis
Carme explains that negotiating separately “is a common strategy used by vulture funds to weaken the community of neighborsBut he doesn’t think that’s going to happen because unity in the building seems to be guaranteed, and supported by a good part of the neighborhood’s social fabric. Councilor of the Eixample, Pau González, supported the mobilization. The objective of the new owner, according to the spokeswoman for the Sindicat de Llogateres, is to build luxury flats and rent them for months. About what you can put in the downstairs locals (the businesses that exist now are also left without a contract), things are not so easy because the district’s use plan limits the most succulent possibilities. Casa Orsola, which owes its name to its promoter, the hydraulic mosaic entrepreneur Joan Orsola (1845-1929), is in Consell de Cent, a street that is about to become the first green axis of the 21 planned in the Catalan capital. Undoubtedly, the reform will revalue the flats. Up, of course.