The measure was one of a dozen unveiled on Monday by the country’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, as the government seeks to quell mounting anger over housing costs that have soared far beyond the reach of many in Spain.
Sánchez sought to underline the global nature of the challenge, citing housing prices that had swelled 48% in the past decade across Europe, far outpacing household incomes.
“The west faces a decisive challenge: to not become a society divided into two classes, the rich landlords and poor tenants,” he told an economic forum in Madrid.
The proposed measures include expanding the supply of social housing, offering incentives to those who renovate and rent out empty properties at affordable prices and cracking down on seasonal rentals. In Spain just 2.5% of housing is set aside for social housing, a figure that lags drastically behind countries such as France and the Netherlands, said Sánchez.
This comment chain is not specifically about non-eu residents.
Letters do not confirm where someone lives. It would be trivial to work around that.
This might shock you, but if you announced a law whereby everyone has to go to the police station once a year to confirm where they live there would absolutely be blood in the streets. It’s a ridiculous over reach and a gross invasion of privacy.
In tax legislation the goal is to be broad based, which means easy to administrate and difficult to avoid.
The solution to this problem which people have been talking about since the 1940s is land tax. Tax the fuck out of all land, but allow people to apply for an exemption for 1 property. It will never become law because the powerful people that make law own property and do not wish to pay tax.