Güímar is the first municipality in the Canary Islands in which the regional government launches a promotion of protected housing thanks to the land ceded by the municipalities after the approval of the Housing Plan, in December 2020. It is announced by the Minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands, Sebastián Franquis, when communicating the tender for the drafting of the project to build 13 protected homes, for 113,039 euros.
This development will be built on a 2,207 square meter plot located in Los Pasitos, in Chacona. They will be distributed in a two-story building.
Sebastián Franquis and the first deputy mayor of Güímar, Airam Puerta –accompanied by the Councilor for Social Services, José Miguel Hernández–, met in the Parliament of the Canary Islands to learn about this action. The regional councilor valued and thanked the efforts of the City Council of Güímar and Puerta, in a special way. The also mayor of Urban Planning highlighted “the important work carried out by his councilors and technicians since 2019” to complete the file and approve the transfer of the land by the Plenary.
The PSOE councilor expected 54 social housing through the purchase and repair of buildings
However, in an official statement, both Puerto and Hernández, both PSOE councilors in Güímar, assured that “they feel cheated by Visocan”, the public company that builds social housing. They point to its CEO, Agustín Fernández, and the managing director, Víctor González. “They have disrespected us and they have disrespected the citizens of Güímar”, because this tender “does not coincide at all with what they had indicated and promised us”. They affirm that there was “a verbal agreement with a handshake” by which Visocan would acquire 54 homes -the Los Aguacateros building “or some other in a similar situation”- to “cede them, under a social rental regime, to Güimara families with limited economic resources. and in a situation of residential exclusion».
Airam Puerta stressed that “the feelings and hopes of many families from Guimaraes have been played with.” The mayor argued that “we feel very frustrated by the treatment received” by the CEO and the managing director of Visocan, “who, we understand, have not lived up to what is expected of a public manager. I do not seek protagonism or generate enmities or confrontations with this, “he concluded.
