SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 25 Oct. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands, Sebastián Franquis, announced this Tuesday in the Parliament of the Canary Islands that the regional government plans, together with several municipalities and councils, the construction of 920 new homes in the archipelago to remove them to the rental market at affordable prices and facilitate access to housing for the most vulnerable families.
The construction of these houses is, in part, financed by the funds of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan of the EU, so the new houses must be built with energy efficiency criteria.
“In order to promote the construction of public housing on the islands, on July 7th we signed an agreement with the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda for the execution of the Recovery Plan with Next Generation funds from the EU, a investment of just over 75 million of which the Canary Islands was a pioneer since it was the first package of this type of European aid that the State granted to an autonomous community in all of Spain. Thanks to these funds, the Canary Islands will launch the programs for the construction of almost a thousand new houses to be destined for the rental market at affordable prices,” he commented.
Counselor Sebastián Franquis, responding to a question from the president of the PSOE Parliamentary Group, Nira Fierro, assured the regional chamber that these 920 homes will be built in two ways, either directly through the Canarian Housing Institute (ICAVI) or through the agreement with the municipalities.
The ICAVI will build the largest lot as it intends to put 671 new rental homes on the market at affordable prices over the next four years with an investment of more than 76.1 million euros (30.8 million European funds and 45.8 ICAVI’s own funds).
The ICAVI, assured Franquis, has begun the internal administrative process to draw up the project drafting specifications with the aim that construction begin in the first quarter of 2024 since European funds establish that they must be completed in the year 2026.
These ICAVI homes will be built in municipalities such as Arrecife, Puerto del Rosario, La Oliva, Santa Lucía, Tazacorte, Guía de Isora, Arona, Gáldar, Yaiza or Adeje.
In addition to the homes that ICAVI will build, the city councils of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and La Laguna, and the Cabildo de Gran Canaria also join this objective to build affordable rental housing by contributing their own resources to those provided by the State, which will allow the construction of another 250 houses in this modality in the archipelago.
The municipality that has benefited the most from this initiative is La Laguna, where the City Council intends to build 151 new protected homes.
The City Council of the capital of Gran Canaria plans to build 36 homes and the Cabildo of that same island, another 63.
The objective of the Canarian Government, as explained by Sebastián Franquis, is that these new homes are destined for families that are registered in the register of applicants for private housing and who have incomes below four times the IPREM, that is, about 32,400 euros per year.
In addition, the rents that will be charged to the beneficiary families will not exceed 400 euros, collects a note from his department.
DEADLINE: JUNE 2026
“We can affirm today that both the municipalities of La Laguna and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, as well as the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, as well as the homes that correspond to the Government of the Canary Islands, are in a position to meet the deadlines established for their construction. and delivery”, pointed out Sebastián Franquis, who stressed that “we must remember that they are European funds, therefore, they must be executed before June 2026”.
For this reason, he said, “we, from the Government of the Canary Islands, have already commissioned the realization of the projects for those 671 homes and we consider that at the end of next year or the beginning of 2024, we will be starting to build those 671 homes.”
The counselor insisted that these are homes intended “to attend to a major housing emergency in the Canary Islands, especially with regard to the difficulties of families in accessing affordable rental housing, which is why this construction of new homes is going to serve to serve a sector of the population that has income but still cannot easily opt for a home for the current price of rents”.
As reported by Minister Franquis in the specific case of La Laguna, thanks to the funds signed with the Ministry, and those provided by the City Council itself, this city will expand the municipality’s public housing stock for the first time in more than a decade, with the construction of these 151 houses that will represent a total investment of 24,135,673 euros, of which the Ministry contributes 7.5 million.
The homes in La Laguna, which will be built through the public company Muvisa, are divided into three different plots: Los Barriales, in Taco, where the construction of 71 homes is planned, another 44 will be built in Tejina and 36 more in The Centurion.
