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The district will approve this Thursday a resolution in which the property is urged to negotiate with the tenants and renew their rents
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The modernist estate on the chamfer between the streets of Calabria and Consell de Centhas already become a symbol against gentrification
the majestic modernist estate in the chamfer between the streets of Calabria and Consell de Cent, on the Esquerra of the Eixample has already become a whole anti gentrification symbol. For the right of Barcelonans to live in their city. After the purchase of the imposing estate -once a famous hydraulic tile factory- by an investment fund and its subsequent announcement of the non-renewal of rental contracts, the neighbors know organized and unionized to denounce the situation and, above all, try to reverse it.
In recent months, the tenants, advised (and cared for, something important in this type of situation) by the Union of Llogateres and the Xarxa d’Habitatge de l’Esquerra de l’Eixample, They have organized a multitude of actions and this Thursday their case will reach the district plenary session, which will approve a resolution requiring Lioness Investments -the current property- to accept one negotiation with the neighborhood of Casa Orsola Y renew leases.
The neighbors have called a small concentration at the gates of the district headquarters at half past six in the afternoon this Thursday, when the plenary session begins. They calculate that the reading and voting on the resolution it will be done around seven in the evening and they take it for granted thatthe resolution will be favorable since they have committed the votes of the two government parties (Barcelona en Comú and the Socialist Party of Catalonia) and of Republican Left of Catalonia.
Unfulfilled agreements
From the Union of Llogateres insist that this new measure of pressure comes “after last week, Lioness Investments once again boycott the negotiation pact that had been reached on Wednesday the 27th as a result of an action in their offices”. In addition to the aforementioned housing groups, the neighborhood of Orsola House has the support of fifty entities in the neighborhood and throughout Barcelona.
At the beginning of March of this year, a crowded demonstration toured the streets of the district to demand dialogue with the property.
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“The situation is very tough for the neighborhoodwho have been sharing stairs for a long time and are seeing how the business strategy consists of expelling families from their homes to leave empty houses and make seasonal rentals at luxury prices“, indicates the group of support to the neighbors in a statement in which they underline that currently, “there are already two homes and the business premises of the low out of contractand during the next few months the contract of other families is finalized”.
The resolution that will be approved this Thursday cites “the legal protection of the right to housing contained in article 47 of the Spanish Constitution“. The text that will be approved this Thursday also highlights the urgency of the negotiation, “given the need of the neighborhood to frame the negotiations with the property within the terms established by the existing contracts” and urges the property to renew contracts.