The Minister of Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands, Inés Rojas, is confident that the new Canary Islands Housing Law will come into force in "four or five months" and will serve to stop "almost 9,000 eviction proceedings" and to prevent a family in social emergency from being evicted from their home. "We are even thinking of enabling the Parliament in the summer so that the Law can enter as soon as possible and be operational soon," the Minister defended in an interview on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero.
The Canary Islands cannot legislate by means of a decree law, as Andalusia did, and will have to modify the Canary Islands Housing Law to allow the autonomous government to expropriate the use for three years from the banks of the homes of those evicted. The Canary Islands Executive will modify this Law to allow it to also have competence in free housing, because "given the current situation, it is absolutely necessary," Rojas said.
With this measure, Rojas explained that "it will be avoided that the bank keeps the house, but that a family that is in social emergency cannot be evicted." In this sense, she explained that the Government "will expropriate the use of the house for a fair price, which will allow families to stay in the house paying a symbolic amount per month."
"Let's imagine a house with a mortgage of 100,000 euros. We would be talking about a fair price of two percent, of 2,000 euros per year what the house would cost those people. We want families to never pay more than 25 percent of their income for a home. The rest would be paid by the Autonomous Community," the Minister indicated.
Dynamization of empty homes
Although perhaps the measure of expropriation of the use of housing has attracted more attention, the Minister of Housing has pointed out that "the dynamization of empty homes" is a "very important and structural" initiative. "There are real estate companies, financial institutions and companies that have a huge number of empty homes with their doors closed. We are going to create tools so that those who have empty homes put them on the rental market at social prices," Rojas explained, who wanted to make it clear that this Law will not affect "natural persons" who have empty houses.
To create these tools, the Government of the Canary Islands will carry out "an incentive measure through taxation" and a "sanctioning" measure, that is, "a fine for those companies that do not make their empty homes available to the market." In addition, the Canary Islands Executive will take the opportunity to carry out a register of empty homes, since "there is no reliable data."
Inés Rojas has defended this measure of the Government of the Canary Islands because "the laws cannot be left behind and, in this case, they have been left behind what society demanded."
