The Socialist Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote will defend this Tuesday in the plenary session a motion to urge the Government of the Canary Islands to withdraw the current Bill for Sustainable Planning of the Tourist Use of Housing, and to urgently approve a Decree Law that temporarily suspends the tourist use of housing on the island of Lanzarote.
The spokesperson for the Socialist Group, Ariagona González, has warned that the text that has reached Parliament after a year and a half of delay “not only arrives late, but also represents a new blow to the municipalities, which will have to assume alone the application of a rule without legal certainty or support from the regional Executive”.
“The uncontrolled growth of the tourist use of housing has worsened the housing emergency that Lanzarote is experiencing”, explained González, who highlighted that only during the period between the prior consultation and the arrival of the project to Parliament there has been a "call effect" that has increased by more than 41% the number of homes registered for tourist use in the Canary Islands and by more than 80% in Lanzarote.
From the PSOE it is considered "unacceptable that the Government of the Canary Islands intends to unload on the town councils all the responsibility for applying the future rule, leaving in their hands, without tools or resources, the verification of more than 65,000 homes in a period of five years. A completely unfeasible task in the current conditions", according to the spokesperson.
Likewise, González criticized that "the law completely ignores the differentiated realities within each island, limiting itself to classifying the municipalities based on whether or not they belong to the so-called green islands, a formula that, in her opinion, does not address the critical situation of territories such as Lanzarote, where the tourist use of housing is expelling the resident population and hindering access to a basic right".
The socialist spokesperson also pointed out that the bill, "far from offering solutions, transfers the problem to municipal planning, when we all know that in the Canary Islands planning is still the great pending issue, and trusting that the town councils will solve this problem through their urban plans is simply a utopia”.
“Access to decent housing in Lanzarote cannot continue to be subject to the interests of the tourism market. We are facing an unsustainable situation that requires courageous and urgent decisions by the Government of the Canary Islands”, concluded Ariagona González.
