Governor Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia welcomed the fact that foreign investors are the ones who buy luxury homes in Puerto Rico and stated that the number of people with an incentive or tax decree to move to the Island —whose move has displaced Puerto Ricans— is not significant.
The governor was confronted with expressions made in 2019 by the now deceased former governor Carlos Romero Barceló, who told the press that Puerto Rico has also become a colony of companies and billionaires with tax decrees, such as those of Law 22, now included in Law 60.
“Regarding comments that high-value properties are being acquired, congratulations, because the impulse of Law 22 was the collapse of the real estate market… High-value homes that there was no market and yes, what was sought is for it to come people with capital to give life to the real estate market”, outlined Pierluisi before questions from the press.
To this he added: “That what we see is what continues to happen, that large-scale investment is seen in Dorado, in the metropolitan area of San Juan, it is seen in the Humacao area and in the same way in the Río Grande area. ”.
In recent days, the issue of displacement caused by these people has resurfaced, since Puerto Ricans —such as actor Ismael Cruz Córdova— who have tried to buy a house to return to the island have received unequal treatment from real estate agents. .
According to Cruz Córdova, the real estate agents did not answer his calls, but when his British friend did call, he received almost immediate responses, conduct prohibited by the federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing for race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, or disability.
Pierluisi Urrutia justified that this year some 1,000 decrees were granted under the Incentives Code.
“The number of investors we have and they have arrived, partly motivated by these incentives, we are talking about thousands, but not even ten thousand. In other words, on an island with 3.1 or 3.2 million inhabitants, this number is not significant”, assured Pierluisi Urrutia.
The Incentives Code is under review by the Senate. Juan Zaragoza Gómez, president of the Treasury Commission of that legislative body, had told this outlet that he would present a substitute project of his authorship to amend the statute, instead of eliminating it, as proposed by the independentist senator María de Lourdes Santiago Negrón.
At that time, the senator proposed that the amendments would create a greater balance so that the beneficiaries are required to make a particular investment and a specific level of employment. The measure would apply to new requests for decrees.
According to Santiago Negrón, these decrees only create a "contributory apartheid" on the Island.
During his second visit to the island, the 2001 Nobel laureate in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz, warned that economic development should not be linked to measures that promote tax evasion and mentioned Law 22 as an example.
