The PSOE of Lanzarote has denounced "the unbearable situation faced by thousands of families on the island, trapped between salaries that continue to fall and a completely runaway rental market." "An unprecedented housing crisis that is aggravated by the inaction of the Cabildo, unable to apply real measures to stop speculation and guarantee the right to decent housing," he adds.
According to Corujo, the latest data shows that salaries in the Canary Islands have decreased by 6.8% in the last three years, while the price of rent has increased by 40.2% in the same period.
In the last year alone, rent rose by 5.6%, reaching 13.50 euros per square meter. “This means that an 80 square meter house already costs close to 13,000 euros per year, which forces many families to allocate almost half of their income to paying rent,” said the general secretary of the socialists in Lanzarote and deputy in Congress.
“The situation is unsustainable. It will be two years since, under our presidency, the tourist saturation of Lanzarote was officially declared. Since then, the Cabildo has been unable to adopt a single forceful measure. There is no control over vacation homes, tourist growth is not limited, public housing is not promoted... Nothing. Just propaganda,” he added.
Corujo has insisted that the uncontrolled growth of demand, combined with the limited supply of housing, has created a “tense, unequal and deeply unfair” market, which expels residents and consolidates precariousness as the norm. “While prices rise without stopping and temporary employment continues to mark the day-to-day, the president of the Cabildo continues to turn his back on reality. Lanzarote can't take it anymore,” he adds.
“They have refused to implement a cap on rent, they have voted against the tourist moratorium, they have opposed the implementation of the ecotax, they have provoked a call effect with their permissiveness towards vacation homes and they have not promoted a single public home beyond those that we left planned from the previous socialist government. Lanzarote can't take it anymore,” concludes María Dolores Corujo.
