“The only thing the Rental Law has done was damage.” With those words, the president-elect Javier Miley promised a strong advance against the rule that regulates the contracts of millions of tenants throughout the country and that a month ago it was modified by Congress. The libertarian wants to repeal the regulations and return to the system that governed until years ago, without price regulations. What would it entail and what could happen to the rental contracts.
For the libertarian, the current regulations governing more than 8 million tenants must be “repealed and understood that it is a contract between parties.” “The only thing the Rental Law has done is cause damage“, he said, at the same time that he expressed himself in favor of contracts having “monetary freedom.” That would eliminate any type of state regulation and return to contracts governed by the Civil and Commercial Code.
For now, it is a real unknown whether a repeal and absence of regulation can benefit tenants, who already have enough difficulties when it comes to renting. defend the few rights they have, added to the excessive prices to enter a home.
Juan Arrizabalaga, reference of the National Tenants Federationhe warned when asked Page|12 that the repeal of the regulations “will deepen the crisis of access to housing that already exists”, and assured that in recent times they have been working hard and “militiating from the fight” for certain “regulatory policies that were never easy” to improve the access to housing increasingly complicated.
Without a regulatory framework, “leaves the door open for housing to deepen its appearance as a dollarized commodity and the impact on access to land and housing.” “It is one of the great utopias of the business sector in Argentina,” he added.
For this reason, the scenarios that are opening up are not hopeful: “There will be greater overcrowding. We are in a situation similar to the 1930s. “There is a process of expulsion from agrarian land and expulsion from urban land.”
“The percentage of owners is 65 percent, which is low, but if you take the big cities the percentage drops much more. That means that you do not have housing stability, that will deepen the process of urban expulsion”, he concluded.
Milei’s dream for rentals
Specifically, Milei proposes returning to the scheme that existed before the existence of the Rental Law, that is, agreements that are made according to what is established by the Civil and Commercial Code. Until the enactment of the law, in 2019, the rentals were for a period of two years and the update was carried out semiannually, agreed in advance by the tenant and the owner and established in the contract.
In any case, the regulations began to be demanded because the lack of regulation brought certain problems of predictability and injustice for tenants. That is why, among other things, methods for calculating increases and a minimum duration of contracts were established.
In the last reform sanctioned in October 2023, 3-year contracts and price updates every six months were established under the Casa Propia formula, prepared by the Ministry of Territorial Development and Habitat, a coefficient based on the evolution of salaries and inflation.
In dialogue with Page|12, Gervasio Muñoz, of Grouped Tenants, rejected Milei’s proposal and warned: “You can always be worse. The repeal of the rental law – so requested by the market, the media and Sergio Massa himself – will institutionalize the law of the jungle to access housing”.
To which he added: “The tenant organizations of the country, of course, will continue to defend the tenants and if necessary we will redouble the fight.”
Muñoz also criticized the current management: “Milei proposes closing the Ministry of Habitat and repealing the Rental Law. And these two measures also find receptivity among the tenants themselves, because during these last four years the Ministry of Habitat did absolutely nothing for 10 million tenants”.
I kept reading
The post first appeared on www.pagina12.com.ar