The spokesperson for the Socialist Municipal Group in the Seville City Council, Antonio Muñoz, has requested the municipal government led by José Luis Sanz to formally ask the Junta de Andalucía to declare Seville a "tense residential market zone." This measure, included in the state's Law for the Right to Housing, would allow for intervention in the scarce affordable supply and limit price increases on new and renewed rental contracts.
Muñoz warned that "housing has become the main problem for thousands of families" in the Andalusian capital and criticized the City Council's passivity in a situation that is displacing residents from their neighborhoods. "Seville must be a tense zone because housing is already straining the lives of thousands of families," stated the spokesperson, urging the mayor to take a stand "on the side of those who need a home to live in."
The socialist proposal suggests that the City Council urge the regional administration, which is competent in this matter, to initiate the procedure for declaring tense zones within the city. This legal status would enable public actions to be directed towards areas with a particular risk of insufficient affordable housing supply and where the economic burden for households to access decent housing has skyrocketed.
Antonio Muñoz emphasized that this measure must be accompanied by a rigorous public diagnosis of the Sevillian residential market. "We cannot continue making housing decisions based on intuition, incomplete data, or figures provided by companies with legitimate interests in the real estate market. Seville needs public, official, and updated data," affirmed the spokesperson.
In this regard, the Socialist Group proposes the creation of a Municipal Housing Observatory to study the housing needs of citizens in each neighborhood and provide the necessary information to reorient municipal urban planning policy. "We want to know what is happening in each neighborhood: how rents are rising, what economic effort families are bearing, where residential housing is being lost, where there is no affordable supply, and which groups are being displaced. Without public data, there is no serious public policy," added Muñoz.
The socialist initiative also calls for coordination between the City Council, the Ministry of Housing, and the Consejería de Fomento of the Junta de Andalucía to design a specific financing plan to increase the public housing stock in Seville. This plan should prioritize housing for young people, low-income families, and the middle class, groups that, according to Muñoz, "are trapped between impossible prices" and a clearly insufficient public supply.
"The housing problem is not solved simply by putting more land on the market or waiting for prices to drop on their own. Public intervention, coordination between administrations, and political courage are needed," stressed the socialist spokesperson, insisting on activating all available legal instruments to protect those who want to live in Seville but cannot because the market is expelling them.
The spokesperson concluded by urging the mayor to "abandon propaganda" and work on a real housing strategy: "Seville cannot resign itself to becoming a city where living is a privilege," he stated.
