Legal regime for the disqualification of protected housing

Abstract

Voluntary disqualification of a social housing is the possibility that the owner of the same has to extinguish the legal regime of the protected housing before the expiry of the period indicated by the law or the regulatory provision, becoming a free housing before the term foreseen by the regulations. The essential requirement to be able to obtain the disqualification was the return of the received financial aid. A few years ago a major change was made to the regulations. It was established that disqualification could only be instituted after a certain number of years —fifteen years, in most of the regional regulations— since the home was definitively qualified. This limitation applied not only to homes qualified as of this regulatory change, but also to homes previously qualified. This change raised whether the principle of non-retroactivity of the rules could have been violated and whether consolidated rights were violated. The courts considered that this regulatory change was in accordance with the law.