Unidos Podemos (Izquieda Unida-Podemos-Equo) will defend today in the municipal plenary session of Santa Cruz de Tenerife that the City Council buys 50 homes a year in the free market (100 for the remainder of the term) to use for social rent.
The proposal was presented this Thursday at a press conference by Ramón Trujillo, accompanied by representatives of the Camping for a Dignified Housing, who for months have been claiming effective compliance with the constitutional right to housing and guaranteeing a decent roof to people who lack housing. sufficient resources and that, in many cases, they are facing the threat of a more or less imminent eviction.
The spokesperson for United We Can warns that “the situation of social precariousness in the municipality is much more serious than what a good part of the citizens perceive” because, extrapolating regional data to the capital, more than 76,000 people living in Santa Cruz enter less than 680 euros per month, “which represents serious difficulties in accessing a home, under market conditions, and, in any case, makes household spending on housing excessive”, a situation that affects 21,000 families who must allocate to this expense more than 30% of your monthly income.
Trujjillo estimates that Santa Cruz de Tenerife has a social deficit of 6,500, so it would be necessary to incorporate about 650 a year to the public park to achieve the objective set in ten years. With the new Housing Plan for the Canary Islands 2020-2025, it is expected to build 743 new properties, “an amount that, although it is a substantial improvement compared to recent years, it must also be recognized that it is clearly insufficient,” says the mayor.
He explains that he has presented this motion because “a much greater effort is needed from the public administrations and it is desirable that the City Council join in with its own significant initiatives, such as the purchase of homes in the free market to allocate them to social rent, as already stated. he has done, for example, in Seville, Madrid, Valladolid or Barcelona ”.
To acquire these homes, at least 100 in this term, Trujillo believes “important to note that the City Council not only has the resources of the next two budgets, but also, on the one hand, has the capacity to borrow and, on the other, will receive income derived from the sale of one of the buildings contributed in the framework of the Las Teresitas case with which this proposal could also be financed ”.
In this context, the spokesperson for United We Can referred to the Camping for a Diga House, in which there are people who are “very worrying examples of social precariousness and distressing situations of uncertainty in the face of the possibility of eviction when living with minors to post”.
Several representatives of the people camped were present at the informative event. Pedro Javier Torres asked the municipal corporation to approve the motion because “the market rents do not adjust to the possibilities of many pensioners”, as is his case, because also “they have stopped making social housing for many years, so that the proposal that is brought to the plenary, if approved, would mean a step forward and hope for many families ”.
Erika Morales affirms that housing “is a right that must be fought for” and the people who are camped out, who have been waiting for solutions for many years, “only ask for a home with a rent tailored to the possibilities of each one” .
Finally, Gelsai Marichal, affirmed that the proposal to buy houses from the City Council for social rent “is good, although it is insufficient, because there are houses on the market that can be bought and what is needed is that the public administrations know how to manage it” .
