The Minister of Social Welfare of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Marciano Acuña, spoke this Monday on Radio Lanzarote - Onda Cero to report that finally the 22 people who were going to be temporarily relocated to the Aula de la Naturaleza in Máguez declined to sleep there.
On Tuesday morning, 99 people were evicted from a housing development they had been occupying for years in Playa Blanca. Of these, 24 were minors, there were five pregnant women, an oncology patient and several elderly people. As a result of this situation, the Cabildo of Lanzarote proposed to temporarily relocate 22 of these people to the Aula de la Naturaleza in Máguez, based on a criterion of "vulnerability".
"We were thinking of that resource because it is the only one the Cabildo has, it is good and it is closed, waiting for a work", added the counselor in the morning Buenos días, Lanzarote. Thus, according to Acuña, "we enabled the Aula de la Naturaleza in Máguez as an immediate and imminent response to this situation."
According to the counselor, at 2:00 p.m. there were 50 people who were going to use this alternative, at 5:00 p.m. there were 22 and at the end of the afternoon there were only eight. "Finally they all declined the invitation," Acuña stressed, who justified that he understands that, "given the situation of despair," the evicted people would opt for another way before going to a place "further away" from their jobs.
"This dramatic situation required finding accommodation from one moment to the next for 50 people and as soon as possible. There is no place in Lanzarote that you can enable from one moment to the next, that meets those conditions," added Acuña.
An even bigger problem
On the other hand, Marci Acuña stressed that the housing problem on the island is a "global" problem. Thus, he added that there is a "housing crisis in Lanzarote that has been brewing for some time and that has to put us all in a situation of better regulation and focus policies so that there is more affordable housing for all those families who need it."
On the other hand, the head of Social Welfare of the Cabildo added that "we have a tourist industry that is flourishing and expanding and requires labor and those people need to live somewhere."
"We have to look a little with perspective and true reality and empathy. We do not have the tourism industry we have for people only from Lanzarote," Acuña said.
At the same time, he took advantage of his intervention to highlight the housing problems that have increased on the island due to the rise of vacation rentals. "If we also occupy the tourist residential areas with tourism, we have a problem. Because those spaces were designed to have their tourist, accommodation and residential space. We have 2,000 vacation homes in Playa Blanca and 2,000 vacation homes in Costa Teguise and Tías."
