Three mayors from the south of Tenerife, of different political persuasion, demand that the construction of public housing be speeded up after more than a decade without protected buildings being enabled in the region. The Government of the Canary Islands, as DIARIO DE AVISOS reported yesterday, wants to promote the process for the construction and acquisition of more than a thousand protected houses in Tenerife, 285 of them in the southern region.
The councilors express their concern about the rise in rental prices in the area, which they attribute to the lack of social housing and the boom in vacation rentals.
“It is impossible that, with salaries of 1,000 euros, a person can undertake a personal project and face rents above 600 euros,” said José Julián Mena (PSOE), mayor of Arona, who called for a “comprehensive solution” for tourist municipalities, “where we suffer enormous pressure on prices”.
In addition, the aronero councilor, who recalled that “for decades” affordable public houses have not been built on a rental basis, called for “limiting” vacation rentals in tourist areas. “Extending it to middle-class towns, where our neighbors live, means taking residential rents to unattainable levels,” he stressed.
For his part, the mayor of Granadilla de Abona, José Domingo Regalado (CC), described the demand for protected housing in his municipality as “urgent”, a situation aggravated by the notable increase in population, to an average of 1,000 inhabitants per year , which has placed Granadilla as the fourth most populous municipality in Tenerife, with 60,000 residents.
“Since 2011, not a single public house has been built in the municipality, despite the fact that in 2020 two plots of land were transferred in San Isidro with a total area of 3,300 square meters,” said Regalado, who has held different meetings in recent years. to build this type of housing, as well as to request the purchase, by the Government, of buildings already built to put them under a social rental system.
The mayor of Granada recalled that the local government has unblocked the scope of the San Isidro Northwest Sector Partial Plan, which provides land for residential use, “with a mixed and collective nature, and a large percentage will be protected housing.” The General Planning Plan contemplates 874 dwellings.
The mayor of Santiago del Teide, Emilio Navarro (PP), blames the current situation on “the lack of management capacity” of the regional Executive: “Many municipalities have made land available to the Government of the Canary Islands, but it is not capable of manage it”. The alderman and president of the Tenerife PP pointed out that the social housing planned in his municipality “was going to start in the first quarter of the year, and the file to put it out to tender has not even started yet.”
Navarro, who also attributed the lack of real estate to the irruption of vacation rentals, stated that the Santiago del Teide City Council has already decided, through subsidies, to start the process of building houses.
In recent days, builders, hoteliers and workers have warned of a possible “collapse” of the tourism sector due to exorbitant rental prices, which prevent employees from finding accommodation at a price consistent with their salaries. A situation that, they argue, is due to the lack of public housing, the reduction in supply due to purchases by vulture funds and the boom in vacation homes.
