The Councilor for Urban Planning and Housing of the City Council of Yaiza, Karina Centeno, met this week with the president of the Acosta Matos Group, José Acosta, a construction company from Gran Canaria, and the general director of RIC Private Equity, Francisco Matos, a collective investment company promoted by different Canarian businessmen from the hotel and food sector.
The reason for the meeting was to learn about the collaboration model proposed by RIC Private Equity, through an Orion Rental Socimi SA, listed public limited companies to promote protected housing for affordable rent.
The Parliament of the Canary Islands has just validated the Housing Decree Law of the regional government on measures to increase the availability of land and buildings for housing. Among them, the rehabilitation of urbanizations and unfinished buildings, allowing them to be completed and the recognition of private initiative on public land for the construction of public promotion housing.
With these meetings, the Yaiza City Council assures that it "continues to study initiatives complementary to the construction project of the first 126 homes by the Government of the Canary Islands on municipal land." In addition, it reports that it has already proposed to Visocan the purchase of a new phase of the Los Ajaches urbanization in Playa Blanca, private promotion houses under a protected housing regime, and also identifies unfinished properties that could be transformed into protected housing for affordable rent.
For RIC Private Equity, "protected affordable rental housing in the Canary Islands is a priority and that its ownership remains in the hands of the Canarians, an obligation." And in that sense, the Canarian SOCIMI plans to direct its investment strategy "towards the completion and rental of unfinished housing developments located in the different Canarian municipalities, as well as the construction of new protected housing of private promotion on land ceded by public administrations."
The fundamental objective of this model proposed by RIC Private Equity is to "be able to put on the affordable rental market, under the validity of the current Canary Islands Housing Plan, at least 2,000 properties in the entire Archipelago." The rental management would be carried out in collaboration with Visocan, through a management contract, where the public company would assume the costs and risks of management with the tenants (delinquency and possible eviction), while Orion would be responsible for the maintenance of the properties.
According to the press release issued by the Yaiza City Council, "this new public-private collaboration model has the singularity that the private part is also collective and local and will contribute to creating a park of protected housing of public management and private ownership, without generating debt or consuming public resources."
In short, this RIC Private Equity initiative would allow to increase the park of protected housing available and make it available to citizens, under a rental regime and at affordable prices, through public-private collaboration.
Óscar Noda declares that "we are open to studying all the initiatives that allow us to expand the rental housing stock in our municipality, so Councilor Karina Centeno is working on all viable alternatives that favor access to housing, a serious national problem that is aggravated by the transfer of long-term rental housing to the vacation market, which also suffers from regulation."
