The Socialist Municipal Group in the Arrecife City Council has firmly rejected the motion presented by the Popular Party and approved with the votes of the government group, which proposes allocating public funds to subsidize private insurance for non-payment and damage to homes rented to young people.
A proposal that, in the opinion of the PSOE, "starts from an alarmist and stigmatizing vision of youth, and does not respond to the true housing emergency that the city is experiencing."
"Subsidizing fear" instead of guaranteeing decent housing
"The PP is once again applying a policy based on fear, which criminalizes an entire generation instead of trusting them and guaranteeing their right to decent housing," said the socialist spokesperson in Arrecife, Alfredo Mendoza. "Subsidizing private insurance is, in practice, diverting public resources to cover the fears of a part of the owners, instead of allocating those funds to build public housing or rehabilitate the existing park."
Mendoza stressed that "63% of the more than 3,000 empty homes in Arrecife are in the hands of large holders and vulture funds. And it is precisely them who the PP now wants to benefit with public money. Instead of mobilizing those homes to put them at the service of the general interest, they intend to subsidize the fears of those who retain them as speculative assets."
The socialist spokesperson recalled that the only public housing promotion currently underway in Arrecife, 198 homes, was designed and planned in the previous legislature under the Presidency of Ángel Víctor Torres in the Government of the Canary Islands and María Dolores Corujo in the Cabildo. "Meanwhile, the current government group has not promoted a single new promotion and has left key projects in the air, such as the 70 homes planned on Triana Street or the 200 planned in Maneje," he added.
"What happened to those homes? Why are initiatives that were already advanced abandoned and measures that mask this lack of management and, incidentally, fuel fear without justification are bet on?", Mendoza questions. "What we need is a comprehensive housing plan, not patches designed to please a few."
The socialist spokesperson has been especially critical of the approach of the popular motion: "At no time is there talk of creating public housing or expanding the social rental park. They focus on squatting and the possibility of non-payment, as if renting to a young person was an act of risk. That distrust towards youth is unacceptable in a serious public policy."
The Socialist Municipal Group insists that Arrecife needs structural measures: the rehabilitation of the public park, the construction of new protected promotions and the use of public land to guarantee access to decent housing, especially among the youngest and most vulnerable sectors.
"The young people of this city do not need to be looked at with suspicion, nor for the fears of others to be subsidized. They need opportunities, institutional support and a brave policy that allows them to become independent without leaving their lives in a rent," concluded Alfredo Mendoza.
