Rental strike: 1,400 euros free per month, according to a forum

The rental strike calculation: 1,400€ per month to spend

Stopping rent payments would turn a tenant who currently has 500 euros free per month into someone with 1,200 or 1,400 euros to spend on leisure, clothing, restaurants, training, or children. This arithmetic underpins the argument that a rental strike would not penalize anyone but would stimulate the grassroots economy. The proponent admits without disguise: it is an exercise in fictional economics in a utopian country.

The thesis divides the board in two: on one side, landlords who extract much of the product from their tenants' labor; on the other, the working class that needs to live near where jobs are. The money that would no longer go to rent, it argues, would end up in neighborhood businesses. The money currently collected, by contrast, would be used to buy another flat to put on Airbnb. The obvious objection, from the individual who supplements their pension with rent, is dismissed before it arrives: that person already has a home and a pension.

How much it really costs to maintain a rental property

The weakest flank of the proposal points to costs. Maintaining a property is not free, and a renovation after twenty years of tenants can wipe out several years of rent. It is recalled that Spanish rent was cheap for decades because the product was poor: flats with the same flooring and beds after seventy years of use. Since 2000, purchasing power has risen, demand has shifted toward better houses, and that costs money.

The price translation used is as trinc: a basement of 40 square meters for 900 euros per month, or a flat with double-glazed windows that does not need heating or air conditioning, for 1,400. The latter, it is claimed, fly off the market and do not even make it to portals. The landlord's story of raising prices out of greed clashes with this other: prices rise because the asset offered is no longer the same.

Why the strike would make rent more expensive instead of cheaper

This is the point where the most emphasis is placed. If payments stop, owners assume more risk and less profitability, and some leave the market. The result would not be cheap rent, but less supply: first expensive flats disappear, then cheap ones, and finally none remain. Scarcity, not price, is the underlying problem, and any measure that reduces supply worsens it. There is no consensus on how much legal insecurity for landlords weighs here, but several participants agree on the direction of the effect.

Parallel to this, the institutional response is discussed. It is argued that a government, whether from the PP or PSOE, would be capable of declaring a state of alarm and detaining tenants en masse, because both are parties voted for by landlords. The ironic response—that they be detained in their own flats, problem solved—does not hide that the scenario is considered unlikely for other reasons.

Alternatives: build, tax empty flats, and the fiscal route

In contrast to the strike, the proposal with the most support is to increase supply. Building public housing and renting it at affordable prices would generate employment, put downward pressure on private prices, and avoid impoverishing the landlord. Forcing rent reductions by decree, it is argued, only impoverishes the owner and, by extension, the entire country. The second lever is fiscal: penalizing the owner of an habitable empty flat with an amount equivalent to the rent they intend to charge while they do not rent it.

Some go further and propose suspending the rental strike to make a strike on taxes, starting with VAT and income tax. Others point to regulating tourist rentals: the Seville City Council, with the votes of the PP and Vox, approved a regulation for tourist flats that would allow up to 23,000 more. A detail that, viewed from the initial thesis, fits poorly with the diagnosis.

Where does the money left unpaid go?

The most debated part of the entire proposal is the destination of the spending. That tenants spend on leisure, clothing, or neighborhood restaurants moves the local economy, yes. But some recall that much of that consumption goes on mobiles, video games, and computers manufactured abroad, meaning the money leaves the country instead of circulating. From this arises the most uncomfortable reading: rent would function as a form of internal capital retention, a mechanism for savings to end up in the Ibex.

One should not take that thesis literally to recognize that it touches a real nerve: housing as a refuge asset in an economy with little industry. Because if the problem is supply and not prices, why has the most repeated solution—building—gone unexecuted for decades?