Last Wednesday, October 28, the Faculty of Law of the University of Valencia hosted a working meeting in order to elaborate the Valencian proposals for the preparation of the preliminary draft of the spanish Law for the Right to Housing, which included the various agents involved in the development of housing policies in our territory, in a meeting co-organized by the Chair of the New Green Transition.
Experts on the subject participated in the seminar to debate the proposals that may be incorporated into the future Law for the Right to Housing prepared by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, the first law of democracy on access to the House. The meeting was opened by the rector of the University of Valencia, Mª Vicenta Mestre, the second vicepresident and counselor for Housing and Bioclimatic Architecture, Rubén Martínez Dalmau, the director at the UV of the Interuniversity Chair of New Green Transition, Aurora Pedro, and the director of the Valencian Building Institute (IVE) Begoña Serrano.
The rector Mª Vicenta Mestre has remarked that “in the context of a new State Law, the Valencian contribution is key; of a territory with high demographic pressure, which knows well the problems of land and urban speculation. And what better space than the University of Valencia and its historic Faculty of Law to make contributions from the regulatory framework, but also from the rest of the dimensions that concur in the UV: economic, sociological, business and public management, geographic and all the other disciplines that are cultivated in this institution”.
“The state law will be the first since democracy started on access to housing’, a rule that the vicepresident Martínez Dalmau has indicated, “must include the voice of the institutions and social agents of the Valencian Community who participate in a decisive manner in the process of preparing a draft of a State Law. A law with a Valencian footprint that has become an essential mechanism that makes the constitutional right to housing effective”.
At the end of the day, the experts have agreed to underline that the Valencian model is exportable and that the experience of the Generalitat in the regulation of mechanisms to make the right to housing effective should be an example for the future State Law. Among the initiatives debated, they have insisted that the Law should include the best practices developed by the second generation of regional laws aimed at guaranteeing the social function of housing. Also, that it be a shared norm, that includes proposals from the autonomies that have been developing and know the ways to promote this social function.