“We want to be heard, we are desperate,” says Melody Salazar Luis, a neighbor of the Las Canteras neighborhood, in Buenavista del Norte, who received an eviction notice yesterday from the Court of First Instance of Icod de los Wines for May 12, that is, next Friday.
It’s not the only one. There are a dozen affected, including families with children and people in vulnerable situations, a condition that, despite being ruled by the Social Services, “the judge did not want to recognize,” she says.
The story goes back more than a decade, when a group of residents signed up to rent a privately-promoted Officially Protected home with an option to buy in a four-building Roycasa development.
In order to legalize them, it was necessary for them to have an exit to the General Highway TF-42. The company managed to obtain permission from the Cabildo de Tenerife to execute one of a provisional nature and was able to legalize only two of them and the others remained closed, since, despite being finished, they did not have all the permits to be inhabited.
According to the mayor, Antonio González Fortes, “between 2012 and 2013 the City Council detected that the promoter had begun to rent those apartments with private contracts, a situation that the residents were warned about.” Last year the promoter lost ownership of the building, which was acquired by a vulture fund and, from that moment, began its fight in the courts. They put an eviction release for October of last year, which was paralyzed and another in December, with the same outcome.
From that date, those affected were divided into two groups. One of them – of which Melody was a part – had the date to leave the property on March 3, a measure that was postponed, while the other had to do so on May 12.
However, yesterday they warned her that she also had to leave her home next Friday, despite the fact that she is recognized as a vulnerable person and with a minor in her care.
“This case is full of irregularities and injustices,” says the mayor. There are neighbors who are recognized that their contract is legal and in force, and have begun to pay the vulture fund, a possibility that they have denied to others, who, like Melody, never refused to pay their rent, Neither the previous nor the current owner. “They tell me that my contract is not legal because it is not registered in the property, when that is not currently done,” she says. “What they want is to throw us out to close the building,” he says.
The lawyer for those affected sent an appeal yesterday, because, as she told them, “the launch is null, because they are only given a period of four business days”, an insufficient time. The City Council has contacted some developers who were interested in buying the property and has also gone to the Canary Islands Housing Institute, but from this institution they replied “that they cannot make expenses in the urbanization”. It has also been accompanying the residents since day one – and this is confirmed by them – advising them, putting them in contact with the Government of the Canary Islands and offering them legal advice. However, nothing seems to have worked.
As an Administration, it can only, for the moment, articulate emergency aid to cushion family economies, manage all the information that the different administrations request and try to obtain rents for those affected, since right now there are no municipally owned homes available.
