Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC) in Arrecife wanted to reiterate its complaint against the “intentional inaction” of the government group of the Popular Party (PP) and Coalición Canaria (CC) in the incessant proliferation of tourist apartments in the capital.
For the Canarian nationalists, "Arrecife is in a housing emergency situation where the percentage of vacation homes in relation to private homes rises to 11% in certain census areas." A situation that they describe as “maximum pressure” for the residents of the capital, particularly for those who are looking for a home to rent or buy.
According to Sheila Guillén, spokesperson for NC-BC in the capital, “Arrecife has gone from being a place to reside and develop your family life, to an apart-hotel where it is impossible to find housing. This is due, the Canarian nationalist understands, “to an open field policy for real estate speculation by certain political groups that means that there are already entire buildings that are being prepared for the vacation modality, to an obsession with mass tourism, and to a lack of planning and strategy in terms of public and affordable housing.”
“The young people of Arrecife cannot build a future in our city. They are forcing us to live with our relatives or to leave not only the municipality, but also the island,” says Guillén, who sees “that it is very easy to interpret the housing problem as a simple supply problem, when it is not. It is a problem of use, speculation and business. If we do not intervene in the use that certain private sectors make of homes, it does not matter how many licenses we approve from the City Council.”
With everything, NC-BC recalls that "they have been requesting concrete measures for more than a year to alleviate the housing crisis that Arrecife is suffering, starting with the request for a Tensioned Residential Market Zone to temporarily curb rental prices; or an incentive policy to mobilize existing empty homes, which in Arrecife is estimated at more than 3,000 properties."