The President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, and the President of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, ratified this Thursday the Cooperation Framework Agreement between the Canary Islands Housing Institute and the first Island Corporation to "promote public housing and promote social rental" in Lanzarote.
Thanks to this agreement, both administrations will collaborate in the "execution and financing" of the actions framed in the Canary Islands Housing Plan 2020-2025 and that are aimed at promoting, fundamentally, the "increase in the supply and the public stock of rental housing", to guarantee the "right to housing and meet the needs of groups with the greatest difficulties in accessing it", the Canary Islands Housing Institute specified.
In this sense, according to the press release issued this Thursday, "this is an important instrument", recently signed by the Minister of Public Works, Housing and Mobility of the Canary Islands Executive, Pablo Rodríguez, and the President of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort, which will articulate and promote the execution of the different specific agreements that are agreed upon in terms of housing in Lanzarote.
The President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, stated that with this cooperation framework agreement "we are fulfilling the roadmap that we have set for ourselves, from institutional collaboration, with the Cabildo of Lanzarote hand in hand, to respond to one of the main problems of citizens, the lack of housing." In this sense, he pointed out that "it is one more of the tools put in place to promote access to housing in the islands, in this case, promoting public housing and the promotion of social rental in Lanzarote."
For his part, the president of the Lanzarote Cabildo, Oswaldo Betancort, was very "satisfied" with the recent signing of this framework agreement that "will allow Lanzarote to have a greater supply of public housing at affordable prices and, for this, we are not only going to make available to the Government of the Canary Islands the necessary land for the construction of public protection housing, but we are also going to promote social rental and finance the purchase of land and properties to face the housing problem that affects so many families, so many workers and so many young people on our island."
In this way, by virtue of this cooperation framework agreement, the Cabildo will allocate annually, during the years of validity of said agreement, a "budget item to finance the acquisition of properties" and, where appropriate, the execution of the works that may be necessary to undertake for their use.
Likewise, it may budget subsidy lines destined for municipalities for the acquisition of land and/or collaborate with urbanization expenses, provided that the land object of the action is destined for housing under a social or affordable rental regime, in accordance with the second additional provision of Decree Law 1/2024, of February 19, on urgent measures regarding housing.
Creation of a joint commission
This agreement also establishes the constitution of a joint commission in order to study and analyze the island reality in terms of housing, and propose actions in the most stressed municipalities so that they have a supply of properties in the market.
Thus, the functions of this Commission will be, among others, to analyze the municipal reality of the island in terms of publicly owned properties under a rental regime, in order to establish and specify the municipalities that require more urgent actions to alleviate the deficit of this type of housing. In addition to studying the supply of finished or pending completion properties that could be acquired or those municipal-owned plots suitable for the execution of public housing.