Santa Cruz will not request the Government of the Canary Islands to designate it as a stressed region concerning housing, despite a report prepared by an external consultant, commissioned by the city’s own council, which states that the municipality, in most of its districts, meets the criteria for such a declaration. This was revealed yesterday by the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez (CC), who justified this decision with another concurrent report conducted by the Municipal Housing department, highlighting the adverse consequences this measure could entail.
The councillor indicated that “regulating housing prices, should the municipality be declared a stressed residential area, would lead to detrimental effects in the market, similar to those seen in Catalonia, and would not alleviate the current housing crisis. Ultimately, as evidenced in other instances, property owners may resolve not to rent their properties as they are compelled by the system to establish a price that does not adequately compensate for delayed payments or leaves them vulnerable to squatters.”
He reiterated that, “while the supply issue is urgent, I will not endorse populist policies that could harm Santa Cruz, and I will refrain from requesting the designation of a tense area. Instead, we will focus on the primary measure that any administration, including state legislation, deems the most effective approach to tackle the issue: the construction of additional public housing. We will continue along this path; for this reason, we are promoting 37 apartments in María Jiménez, acquiring a building with 20 social housing units in Valleseco, another 100 in La Gallega, and an additional 226 that will be constructed in Ofra and Cuevas Blancas,” he noted.
Furthermore, Bermúdez stated that, “in our pursuit of solutions to the housing dilemma linked to population growth, Santa Cruz will uphold the low tax burden related to construction, which is one of the most affordable in Spain. I will also urge both the Canarian government and the state to implement measures within the announced extraordinary package that would permit local councils to reduce bureaucratic barriers to building homes, with more flexible emergency regulations that enable more to be achieved in a shorter timeframe.”
For her part, the councillor for Housing, Belén Mesa, clarified that, “following the mayor’s pledge during the plenary session on March 1, an external study on the residential market was commissioned, revealing that we exceeded the price index in all districts, yet the effort rate (the average time it would take a family to afford a home) only surges in Centro-Ifara. This analysis, complemented by another conducted by the department based on research from the Bank of Spain and various universities, considers it inappropriate to declare the area as stressed.”
