SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 18 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –
Canarian Coalition has warned that the Government of Spain’s Bill for the Right to Housing will mean “authentic chaos” in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and La Laguna, a situation that will affect thousands of people in these municipalities and that it will mean a “Hard blow” for neighborhoods such as San Pío, Cuesta Piedra, Santa Clara, La Verdellada, Las Mantecas, Valle Colino, Valle Vinagre, Bajamar, Geneto and San Matías.
The deputy of the Canarian Coalition in the Congress of Deputies, Ana Oramas, made it clear that as nationalists they cannot endorse a law that violates the Statute of Autonomy. For this reason, he announced that they have presented a total of 23 suppression amendments in the articles of the bill that “attack the power of the Canary Islands to define and develop their own housing policy and adapted to its territorial singularity as an Archipelago and to the extent of the true needs of the canaries”.
Ana Oramas asserted that this project “does not specify or provide effective solutions to the problem of lack of public housing and measures are not proposed to encourage the promotion and construction of new homes that expand the current public housing stock.” “What’s more, the obstacles of this law are going to achieve an opposite effect that, with all certainty, is going to stop the construction of new houses”, highlighted the national deputy.
Oramas asserted that the bill “justifies the squatting of homes.” “This law gives carte blanche to squatting, harms the right to property and, among other things, will force the owner to have to bear expenses for a squatted home. In addition, the private owner will be the one who has to bear the right to its defaulting tenant to the enjoyment of decent and adequate housing”.
For all these reasons, Ana Oramas called on all the parties represented in Congress, the Canarian deputies and the senators to present the same amendments that the Canarian Coalition has presented and to convince their parties in Madrid because this law is ” nonsense in our Autonomous Community,” he said.
A “CLEAR LEADERSHIP”.
For her part, the deputy of the CC-PNC-AHI Nationalist Group Socorro Beato explained that this bill “contains a series of general guidelines on housing policy that represent a clear leadership of the actions of the autonomous communities and local corporations, contravening article 148.1.3º CE, which attributes competence in housing matters to the communities”.
“It is these and not the State that can develop their own policy, including the encouragement and promotion of housing construction, which are fundamentally the type of public actions in which housing policy is specified,” Beato recalled.
In addition, he announced that they will register a Proposal not of Law in the Parliament of the Canary Islands to urge the Government of the Canary Islands to comply with article 48.5 of Law 2/2003, of January 30, on Housing in the Canary Islands, favoring access to property of the dwellings to the tenants of the public housing stock, having the right to have the deductions equivalent to the payment of rent paid for rent applied to them on the purchase price.
“This Bill has nothing more than populist and propagandistic ideas that cannot be assumed by the State, transferring the ballot to the autonomous communities,” criticized Beato.
AFFECTED FAMILIES
The spokesman for the Canarian Coalition in the La Laguna City Council, Jonathan Domínguez, stated that the changes in the Housing Law project “generate a serious problem for thousands of families in promotions in the municipality.”
Specifically, Domínguez continued, “from La Verdellada, Las Mantecas, Valle Colino, Valle Vinagre, Bajamar, Geneto and San Matías; and to which we must add the homes of the III Canary Island Housing Plan, and what is going to affect, even, the 197 families of the first phase of Las Chumberas, a bloody case since the new houses that are being built in this area will not be able to pass into the hands of their legitimate owners with this new law”.
“We are talking in total in the municipality of more than 2,000 families who are renting and who had their access to property regulated by the Canary Islands Law. They have been paying their rent for years and discounting the price of housing and now they see this in danger “, he asserted.
In this regard, the mayor explained that in one of the amendments presented by CC “a new additional provision is requested to capture the competence of the autonomous communities to regulate access to those homes resulting from public replacement actions, and those intended to make effective the right of rehousing, when they are going to be classified as protection”.
“With this we intend to clarify the competence of the Canary Islands to establish the legal regime applicable to situations such as the replacement of Las Chumberas homes,” he said.
“Canarian Coalition in La Laguna, during the previous mandate, worked intensely with those responsible for the neighborhood communities and the Government of the Canary Islands to find the safest fit to make the transfer of homes possible. However, this new reality will be a hard blow, a wreck for hundreds of families in La Laguna,” said the spokesman for the Laguneros nationalists, who criticized the “demagoguery” of PSOE and Podemos in La Laguna regarding this issue.
A “MISSED OPPORTUNITY”.
For the deputy mayor and CEO of Housing of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, Juan José Martínez, this law “is a missed opportunity; it also has very negative effects on the hopes and dreams of Santa Cruz families when it comes to accessing property to the houses where they live”.
He assured that neighborhoods such as San Pío, Santa Clara and Cuesta Piedra will be affected by this bill. “In Santa Cruz there are 1,500 families who live in a social rental regime in some house in the Santa Cruz municipal park. Residents of these neighborhoods who had the prospect of accessing these properties and now the Government of Spain annihilates their dreams,” warned the mayor.
In addition, he assured that this law “does not go into important aspects, into real problems. For example, in Santa Cruz there are currently 15,000 empty homes, but there are no specific measures to solve this.”
