> The statistics show that Barcelona (and Madrid) are at a historical minimum of empty houses available There are few empty houses NOW. That is why, if Ada Col

> The statistics show that Barcelona (and Madrid) are at a historical minimum of empty houses available There are few empty houses NOW. That is why, if Ada Colau was also NOW passing a law to fine people for keeping houses empty, that would probably be a political stunt. HOWEVER, today's news is not about any law being passed, but about the consequences of a law passed in 2007. With that in mind, let's see if that law has been effective at decreasing the amount of empty houses since then, as that's the relevant time frame for this news story (below I'm just quoting the figures from[1], first shared by [2], AFAIK): (2007: the anti-empty-houses law is passed) 2011: 80,000 empty houses (9.6% total over the 2019 total housing number, so probably underestimated) 2016: 31,000 (3.7%) 2019: 13,000 (1.52%) This trend is far more interesting, as it strongly suggests that the law managed to unblock 8% of the total housing in Barcelona in under 8 years, making it 6 times smaller than it was. Make any problem you have 6 times smaller and you'll understand how big a deal this is. So, clearly not a stunt: Ada Colau is just following the rules given to her and everybody else. She may be the first one taking those rules seriously, actually, but in any case, if the fines were not issued, all the landlords in the 8% that did comply with the law, could sue the government, and rightly so. More generally, Colau cannot possibly be responsible for all problems currently plaguing Barcelona. They have been brewing over years of incompetence under governments both from the left-wing unionist party and the right-wing religious nationalists alike, who have all been stealing from the middle class for their own profit for the last thirty years or so, just as the political elites of virtually every major Western country. I definitely think Colau can be criticized on a number of things, and I generally agree she's an awful major, but nobody can blame her for problems whose magnitude is so big that they obviously took decades to fester. [1] https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3299445/0/barcelona-detecta-un-152-de-pisos-vacios-en-17-barrios-y-calcula-unos-13000-en-la-ciudad/ https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/3299445/0/barcelona-detecta... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/vote?id=19429961&how=up&auth=23d90b2dfb48999de1b7839e1c148156c5b160ac&goto=item%3Fid%3D19420408#19429961 https://news.ycombinator.com/vote?id=19429961&how=up&auth=23...