Fifteen of Tenerife’s 31 municipalities will receive grants to acquire completed or unfinished homes, owned by real estate developers or financial entities and to build social housing promoted by the municipalities, under the Insular Active Housing Program 2024. The municipalities prioritized (in order) are San Miguel de Abona, La Guancha, Arico, Buenavista del Norte, El Tanque, Santa Úrsula, Güímar, Granadilla de Abona, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, La Matanza de Acentejo, El Sauzal, Santiago del Teide, La Orotava, Los Silos, and La Laguna.
This final list excludes two of the 18 municipalities that applied for the aid. Tacoronte requested an extension of the error correction period, which the Insular Government Council denied as it is a competitive process. In the case of San Juan de la Rambla, the City Council did not submit any documentation.
Within the deadline to formalize the application, three other municipalities faced the Council’s rejection for similar reasons. Puerto de la Cruz requested an extension of the proposal submission deadline, rejected as it is a competitive process; La Victoria de Acentejo and Arona expressed in writing “their willingness” to join the program, “but without submitting any of the required documentation,” which is why the request for correction was not even processed.
The Guía de Isora City Council was excluded from this first edition of Active Housing because, from the initially submitted documentation and that provided within the correction period, it was established “that the proposal does not meet” the requirement that all homes to be bought or built “must consist of complete developments or, at a minimum, a block or unit of homes in its entirety, not allowing the financing of independent homes.” The Council withdrew the application “as the proposal does not conform to the program’s characteristics”.
In this context, three municipalities had to lower their expectations. Los Silos, which submitted three proposals, saw them reduced to the one related to building dwellings as the two for buying properties did not meet one of the established requirements. Arico also entered with three proposals but reduced it to one in the documentation presented to correct the shortcomings, while El Sauzal prioritized one of its three requests considering the maximum aid limit set by the program.
[–>
Outside the Program
[–>
In this edition of the Insular Active Housing Programme, the municipalities of Arafo, Candelaria, Fasnia, Vilaflor, Arona, Adeje, Guía de Isora, Garachico, Icod de los Vinos, San Juan de la Rambla, Los Realejos, Puerto de la Cruz, La Victoria de Acentejo, Tacoronte, Tegueste, and El Rosario will not benefit.
The prioritization in granting the subsidies was determined by the coefficient of homes put on the rental market per municipality population. The preference criteria aim to give priority to proposals that put homes on the rental market in the shortest time possible. With this foundation, the Council distributed the applications into three groups: home purchase, home purchase with finalization works, and home construction.
The largest amount of aid (almost 5.6 million) is destined for buying unfinished properties
[–>
Distribution by Groups
[–>
San Miguel de Abona, La Guancha, and Arico are part of the group that allocates the subsidy to home purchase, a total of 31 with a contribution of 1.8 million from the Council. Buenavista del Norte, El Tanque, Santa Úrsula, Güímar, Granadilla de Abona, and Santa Cruz de Tenerife form the group that will use the funds to purchase homes requiring finalization works; a total of 107 with 5.5 million from the Insular Corporation. La Matanza de Acentejo, El Sauzal, Santiago del Teide, La Orotava, Los Silos, and La Laguna will directly use the aid in constructing 89 dwellings, subsidised with 5.1 million by the Council.
Altogether, the initiative will add 227 homes to the market, with an Insular financing of 12,527,543 Euros, as stated in the decision of the Insular Government Council, adopted in the extraordinary session of April 29. The Council requested funding from the Canary Islands Housing Institute (Icavi) to cater to as many requests as possible.
Regarding the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council, the documentation submitted by the Council refers to an offer from a developer regarding a housing development requiring finalization works. In the report, the Council states that a tender will necessarily have to be approved to proceed with the purchase, indicating that “the acquisition of the housing development in the turnkey modality will be preferably considered, with the promoter entity being responsible for the execution of the completion works of the building.” The uncertainty
About the necessity, or not, to carry out completion works and to process a tender, which will delay the acquisition of homes, determined that the Santa Cruz City Council falls into the group that will use the grant to buy unfinished properties.
Los Silos, Arico, and El Sauzal had to reduce to one the three proposals they submitted
[–>
First allocation
[–>
The Island Government Council granted subsidies for the first 78 homes of the plan with a contribution from the Island Council of nearly €4.5 million for an investment of over seven million in San Miguel de Abona (23), La Guancha (5), Arico (3), El Tanque (6), and Santa Úrsula (26).
It is worth noting that the Island’s most relevant two tourist municipalities are not part of this housing programme by the Tenerife Island Council. In the case of Adeje, the Island Government Council agreement did not even mention that it submitted an application, while Arona did not process any documentation. Yesterday, the Socialist spokesperson, José Julián Mena, reproached the municipal government for “wasting a key aid” for the people of Arona “who do not have access to affordable housing.”
[–>
The councillor recalled that in the previous term, when he was mayor, the City Council provided land in La Estrella to build public housing, and there was “the repurchase of a building of social housing that had been sold to a private fund.” Likewise, the PSOE referred to a few weeks ago when the government group (PP, CC and Más por Arona) voted against requesting the declaration of Arona as a tense zone, “which would have allowed for intervention in prices in a municipality where it is almost impossible to find housing at affordable prices.”
