The contest to run the second phase of the rehabilitation of social housing Antón Guanche It was declared deserted as no company had attended. With a budget of 913,605 euros, it is a work promoted and co-financed by the Ministry of Development, the Government of the Canary Islands, the Tenerife Council, the Candelaria City Council and the owners of the affected homes. This represents a further delay in the completion of work highly demanded by the population of this popular residential area of Villa Mariana.
The objective is to carry out the rehabilitation of the common areas of these social housing by means of the improvement of security, tightness, accessibility, telecommunications, health and habitability –Recovering the built heritage in the buildings– and in the improvement and beautification of the urbanization and the free spaces that surround the buildings, guaranteeing accessibility to them.
This action is integrated into the Antón Guanche III Urban Regeneration and Renewal Area (ARRU) and represents a modification of the update project prepared in 2020. These are modifications arising in the development of the first phase of the work, corresponding to a change of the structure and definitions of the enclosure, as well as in the replacement of the general sanitation and supply networks in the interior area of the main complex. At the time of announcing the call for the contest, the mayor, Mari Brito, stressed that this occurs “in compliance with the commitment acquired with the neighbors”, so “their demands have been taken into account.”
The performance, whose contest no company showed up, affects six housing blocks, four of them located in the main complex (numbers 2, 7, 8 and 13) and another two blocks in the isolated nucleus, which corresponds to numbers 18 and 19. In fact, it was contemplated the division of the contract into both parties.
With a lead time of five months, the forecast of the Candelaria City Council was that the works would begin last December, so the completion should take place next May, as stated in the specifications.
It should be remembered that the then called Antón Guanche Comprehensive Rehabilitation Area (ARI) was the subject of a judicial investigation for alleged irregularities, leaving that phase unfinished, and that it was in January 2012 when the Public Business Management Entity of Companies and Public Services of Candelaria (Epelcan) – municipally owned – began the work that would affect the first 70 homes. Ten years later, the neighborhood is still waiting to complete the improvement.
