The Executive Branch plans to communicate in the coming days the details of an “offer” aimed at granting a solution to an old claim that has gone through several government administrations without a solution: that of the “resettable unit hostages”who claim to have been harmed by having contracted a housing loan in that virtual currency and who, for years, have been demanding a restructuring of their debts.
The problem affects about 23 thousand families. Some 7,000 owe the Mortgage Bank and the rest to the National Housing Agency (ANV). President Luis Lacalle Pou had received the debtors in the Executive Tower on April 4 and there he had given the go-ahead to a solution “without magic”. The definition took effect last week, when the president telephoned the nationalist senator Carlos Camy – author of one of the bills in this regard – to ratify his commitment to reach a formula.
It will not be through Parliament though. As Camy told The ObserverLacalle told him that this mechanism “would not be viable.” Instead, the president advanced, It will come through administrative channels and will be the responsibility of the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF).
Camy has a meeting pending in the next few days with the ministerial authorities, who will officially transmit the scope of that solution. The senator admitted knowing that the formula will not have the forecast, in number of beneficiaries, than those involved in the legislative initiatives. “It will be a question of numbers,” he said, in which the government will say what it can offer.
The approval of Economy was essential for a solution, which would set aside the three projects being discussed in Parliament. One was presented by Camy, the other by his Colorado colleague Germán Coutinho and the third by lobbyist Raúl Lozano. And it will ultimately be a political solution. This is at least what the groups of “resettable unit hostages” that this Tuesday they appeared again in the Senate Finance Commission to present their claims. Supporters of a law, there they said they knew that, when a project reaches the Ministry of Economy, “many times the best intentions shipwreck”.
Dinorah Rodríguez is part of one of the groups that brings them together. She has been a debtor of the Mortgage Bank since 1999. According to the calculations that she presented to the legislators, the readjustable unit grew 40% above inflation in the last fifteen years. Some cases have been reported there. A “gentleman” who is 82 years old and has been paying for 40 years, but still owes more than thirty years. Another lady that she bought in 1985, she finished paying this year and when she went to the bank they told her that she still owed US$94,000 for hangings. The woman ended up in a mobile emergency. A few days later, when she checked again, the debt was already US$4,102,000.
Julis Noel Lerena bought her home in 1987, when she “fell into the deception” of the BHU. He says he has been paying for 35 years, but he still owes 2,300 UR. According to his calculations, he will still have to continue paying for another 90 years.
As he recounted, the original average of each credit is US$ 35 thousand. If 23 thousand debtors are considered, would total about US$ 805 million. However, he indicated, the projection of all the debts today before the BHU totals US$ 4,150 million. It is, he clarified, a figure projected by the president of the bank, Casilda Echevarría. More than five times the credit. To this day, she assured her, each debtor has paid an average of US$ 168 thousand.
In Parliament they also hope to know the Economy formula to determine how to continue. Camy and his colleague Germán Coutinho are in favor of insisting on the legislative route, and if it continues with three separate projects or if they are unified. Also, if the announcement of the Executive will go along the same line that the senators intend. “The government committed to a starting point,” Coutinho said.
The Colorado senator expressed his desire that the solution include as many families as possible. “If that solution doesn’t fit all the same, we have to accept it,” he said. “Then we will go for the missing ones.” What he did say is that the “hangings” are “nonsense” that must be eliminated. Coutinho quoted a famous withdrawal of a murga from Salto: “Don’t let hope die.”
Criticism of the president of the BHU
At the parliamentary level there is a lot of annoyance with the president of the BHU, Casilda Echeverría. In mid-July, the hierarch had publicly expressed herself about the proposed solution formulas. As she had warned, the institution could not grant new loans for two years if the parliamentary initiatives prospered. “Do any of you ask when you take out a credit or when you are late with the card that the debt be left without adjustment?” She asked at a press conference.
Camy said Tuesday that he was surprised. “It does nothing more than ratify what we think and inspired us to present a bill,” said the senator. His Colorado colleague Germán Coutinho expressed himself along the same lines. “We are part of this government and we consider that we have done many things, but also that there are others pending,” he acknowledged. Coutinho maintained that the one of the debtors is the “subject one”, in which “we are going to go until the end to find solutions”. The senator described as “unfair” the actions of the president of the BHU.
Coutinho assured that the “hangings” are a “nonsense” that must be eliminated and asked the hierarch for “minimal respect” in the analysis of the problem. . “If the Mortgage Bank does not have to lend more money for a certain number of years, it should not lend more, but it should not charge more than its share.”
Rodríguez, on behalf of the debtors, ironically commented on Echeverría’s assertions that delinquency at the BHU was very low. That is explained, he said, because in almost all cases the housing fee is deducted from salaries and pensions. “When we call ourselves hostage to the reset unit, that’s why,” he said.
He was also in debt
The debtors claim to have received the sympathy of the Undersecretary of Housing, Tabaré Hachembruch Legnani. “He told us about his particular case,” Rodríguez told the legislators. The hierarch told them that he too had his debtor. “Given an economic circumstance derived from his activity, he was able to cancel, at that time, with a significant reduction,” was the testimony. According to Rodríguez, Hackembruch told them that he is aware of his problems, for having been a debtor and for “knowing that the salaries and pensions of Uruguayans are not enough to face an early cancellation.”
TheWall
Before the legislators, Lerena appealed to a particular example to describe the situation of the “fools” who at the time requested credits from the BHU. “We were falling little by little in a row,” she said. As described by Pink Floyd in the video for “The Wall”, one of his most famous songs. Lerena remembered that in that story the wall was built from the inside and they were locked up. Then the meat grinder arrived, and “everyone like zombies” went inside. “That’s how we fell,” he said. “I don’t know if sausages came out, but we fell in there.”
