The Canary Association of Vacation Rentals (Ascav) has delivered 6,067 signatures and 685 letters from business associations to demand from the regional Parliament and the autonomous Government an urgent moratorium of one year to negotiate a new draft law on vacation rentals.
The president of Ascav, Doris Borrego, has informed in statements to the media after delivering the signatures to the president of the autonomous Parliament, Astrid Pérez, that this moratorium aims to paralyze new registrations of vacation rentals and consolidate the existing ones.
It also asks the highest autonomous institutions to form a working group to agree on and develop with all administrations and social agents a new regulatory framework that regulates vacation rentals in the Canary Islands.
Doris Borrego has pointed out that the draft presented by the Ministry of Tourism presents very important difficulties, such as compliance with classified activity, and has asked that apartments that are not marketed in a unit of exploitation have the possibility of being dedicated to vacation rentals.
If the draft is processed in the current terms, Canarian families will be prevented from continuing in this activity, warned the president of Ascav, who has claimed the right of the islanders to continue benefiting "from this tourist cake that is the heritage of all Canarians, and not just a few".
Ascav undertook the initiative to collect signatures in the face of the "cumbersome and difficult" procedure of presenting allegations to the draft, despite which almost a thousand have been formulated in a few days, she indicated.
She also recalled that Ascav warned at the time of the call effect that this text was going to cause, which has caused that 20% of the vacation rentals that have been registered are not even dedicated to the activity, but have been registered "just in case".
What is clear, Doris Borrego continued, is that "practically nobody agrees" with the draft, neither the island councils, municipalities, business federations "and much less the owners of" vacation rentals, a sector that generates more than 1,700 million euros "that we do not believe that the Canary Islands is now in a position to lose".
In addition, she stressed that "in no case" is the sector the cause of the lack of housing in the Canary Islands, in her opinion "a very interested mantra" to damage an activity that has about 67,000 vacation rental homes, of which 20% are operational.
In any case, with 211,000 empty homes and 30,000 for sale, the fact that houses have left the rental market is the fault of a law that does not give legal certainty to the owners, considered the president of Ascav.
