New students leave for Higher Education with expectations, dreams and unfulfilled projects, so many about to explore a new city. A new school year has just begun and, once again, there are so many who cannot afford the price of housing in the cities where they were placed, with the addition of the tuition fee (which does not go down and remains homeless in the second and third cycles) , transport, materials, books and materials. The situation worsens with the inflationary crisis we are experiencing: we pay more for everything but we don’t receive more. The government’s inaction, resigned to impoverishment, does not serve the students. We cannot ignore the data: 10% of a total of 50 thousand placed students did not complete their enrollment.
Between 2019 and 2022, the government promised 12,000 beds in university residences that never arrived. The offer of 15,000 existing public beds in 2018 remains until today. The Government is still worryingly far from the goal it had set itself: 30,000 beds in university residences by 2026. In this scenario, we see that only 10% of displaced students take place in public residences, making up one of the lowest percentages in the Union European. The other 90% are thrown into the jungle of real estate speculation.
Rooms around 400 euros, pantries placed on rental sites to deceive students, deteriorated and unhealthy spaces and landlords who refuse to sign legal contracts. This is the reality created by the sum of resignation in the face of the 20% or 30% increase in housing prices in large cities and permissiveness in the face of real estate speculation and the large funds that sell cities in pieces, transforming them into disneylands inhabited by tourists and digital nomads. For this reason, Bloco de Esquerda proposed the requisition of local accommodation belonging to large landowners as an urgent measure to fill the lack of housing for students. Once again, the Government hissed to the side and chose to leave the privileges of the great landlords untouched.
In this context, the State Budget for 2023 arrived from the absolute majority of the Socialist Party. If we already knew this, this SO confirmed what was already the PS policy in the face of the crisis we are experiencing: impoverishment, loss of purchasing power, increase in the gap between the richest and the poorest. We are one of the countries in which, according to the OECD, wages will lose the most from inflation: a reduction in purchasing power is expected at the level of the sinister times of the troika. Given this scenario, there is no commitment to recovering labor income, taxing excessive profits or controlling prices. The Left Bloc’s proposal couldn’t be more different: raise wages, control prices and tax abusive profits. If in 2015 we managed to reach the conclusion that the infamous neoliberal slogan “there is no alternative” was nothing more than a fallacy of those who line their pockets at the expense of those who work, why does the PS insist on a similar discourse in 2022?
There is an alternative, yes. We are a generation whose memories of economic recession are almost as many as those of prosperity. The future and progress have been stolen from us by those who want us to believe that we have to live in absolute immediacy, to the rhythm of stock exchanges, loan installments, unregulated schedules and the call of the boss who does not respect rest. People and students want nothing less than a room to sleep, a college to study and a city to live in.
The texts in this section reflect the personal opinion of the authors. They do not represent the VISION or mirror its editorial positioning.
