The Equo councilor in the Arrecife City Council, Esther Gómez, will present a motion on vacation homes at this Friday's plenary session. This was explained in the program 'Buenos Días Lanzarote' of Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero. "What the motion proposes is that a municipal authorization be requested for this type of economic activity that is within the classified activities," says Gómez.
"One of the most important issues regarding vacation homes is the pressure they are exerting on neighborhoods. Before, in neighborhoods like Argana, it was impossible to see a vacation home. They were residential neighborhoods, as they are called. Today we see the absurdity of offering a rooftop with tents, promoting it as a vacation rental. It does a lot of damage to the municipality," criticizes the Equo councilor.
From Equo they consider it "very necessary" that there is a registry of vacation homes in the municipality. "When a vacation home is under this regime, it has an application with the Government of the Canary Islands. But then you can contract with the different platforms, which are doing a lot of damage. And subsequently there is no follow-up or control of how the homes are," explains Gómez.
"When there is a municipal authorization, the Local Police can carry out a follow-up. But in the meantime, there is no inspection because we have no record that there is an activity there. And if you don't have in your regulations that this activity has to be registered in the municipality, then you can't claim anything about that activity. It's not illegal, it's "legal loophole". Therefore, we firmly believe that vacation homes have to be controlled," says the councilor of the Arrecife City Council.
Gómez points out that, knowing that there is "a housing crisis and brutal pressure on rents," tools must be articulated to manage the situation in the municipality. "We are anticipating that we are going to find ourselves in a very complicated moment. It's not that you won't be able to pay the rent, it's that there won't be any rent," says the councilor.
"Vacation homes, what they do, is uproot the neighborhoods. Where before you knew each other and had a neighborhood network, now it is a constant coming and going of people. And there are neighborhoods that are not accessible to people with normal salaries because vacation homes have raised their price to infinity," concludes the Equo councilor.