The Minister of Public Works, Housing and Mobility of the Government of the Canary Islands, Pablo Rodríguez, announced today in a parliamentary committee that the current Executive has initiated the corresponding procedures to begin developing the document of the next Housing Plan of the Canary Islands, with the aim of guaranteeing the right of access to decent housing for the Canarians and addressing the current housing emergency.
In this regard, Minister Pablo Rodríguez reported that "work has already begun on the roadmap for the preparation of the new Housing Plan of the Canary Islands. This instrument must adapt to current needs and anticipate future challenges, with a rigorous evaluation of the current plan to identify strengths, areas for improvement and aspects to be reformulated."
"We want this work to be participatory and carried out in collaboration with the different parliamentary groups, because we understand that the right to housing must be above any political difference," said the minister responsible for the area.
Progress in the evaluation and monitoring of the current plan
The current plan is structured in six strategic axes that comprehensively cover the main demands of citizens: social rental as a quick way to access housing, the promotion and control of public promotion, attention to particularly vulnerable groups, rehabilitation as a tool to improve the existing housing stock, the improvement of administrative procedures to guarantee transparency, and collaboration with administrations to optimize resources and maximize the impact of public policies.
In this line, the monitoring of the current plan has been carried out by the Technological Institute of the Canary Islands (ITC), through an order formalized in April 2022.
This analysis is essential to evaluate the degree of execution of the current plan and lay the foundations for an optimized design of the next plan, with the aim of continuing to advance in concrete achievements such as the access of young people to their first home, affordable rent for families and the improvement of habitability in neighborhoods through sustainable rehabilitation projects.
However, the minister explained that "at the beginning of this legislature we inherited this formula that, despite having made an effort this last year, we have realized that it is not really effective to monitor the Housing Plan of the Canary Islands and advance in the development of a new one." Rodríguez added that "we have decided to opt for another way, with the aim of establishing a roadmap that allows us to identify, assess and identify all those aspects that should be reformulated to continue advancing in housing matters in the eight islands."
This new roadmap plans to carry out prior analysis procedures to evaluate the current document, analyzing the housing needs for the next plan, evaluating the housing demand of each island, the study of population growth, the availability of land and the existence of uninhabited homes to, subsequently, analyze the complementary equipment and services.
The resulting reports must be worked on with the housing spokespersons in the Parliament of the Canary Islands to promote a consensus framework on which to develop the next Housing Plan of the Canary Islands.
Likewise, the minister informed the deputies that "the Housing Decree Law 1/2024 will also be evaluated to know the impact that the measures promoted by the norm have had at the beginning of the year."
To conclude, Rodríguez insisted that "the Ministry is going to give all the impetus so that this plan has the best possible result, because we have a duty to the future of the Canarians, regardless of who governs. It is an issue that should unite us because housing is a fundamental right so that residents in the Archipelago can develop their own life project."
