In Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-bc) we are convinced that housing should be one of the strategic axes of public policies. For which adequate and more agile actions by the administrations are needed. With more resources, a greater role for the city councils, more diligence in processing, more aid for rent, more rehabilitation, more use of planning, more fight against speculation and greater public-private collaboration. From the conviction that it is a substantial constitutional and statutory right to develop a dignified life that neither vulnerable families and people nor many others with employment and average incomes can access today; nor young people seeking their emancipation. But the solution is not, in any way, to facilitate its construction on rustic land, colonizing it and opening doors to speculation, as proposed by the Government of the Canary Islands. A proposal completely alien to a sustainable development model and that mortgages our present and future.
It is true that the data regarding housing is worrying in our land, both due to the constant increase in the price to buy a house in the Islands, whether it is new or used, and due to the enormous increase in rents. As well as the enormous difficulties in finding one in the most tense areas, both in large cities and in tourist islands.
The constant population growth undoubtedly influences, especially due to the arrival of people from all over the State and the European Union (EU), as well as from Latin America. In recent decades, in the Archipelago we have grown in population very significantly. Increasing by half a million inhabitants in the first twenty years of this century, an increase of more than 30%, doubling the increase in the State as a whole. In the same period, the Basque Country increased its population by just 5%. Experts predict that the Canary Islands could have about 2.6 million inhabitants in 2037.
It is also necessary to rigorously analyze the impact of phenomena such as vacation rentals, by taking thousands of homes out of the residential rental market due to the attractiveness of their high profitability; We are against the proliferation of vacation housing buildings that gentrify our neighborhoods without redistributing income or generating employment. And, likewise, we propose establishing restrictive measures on the acquisition of homes by foreign citizens not rooted in the Islands and whose purpose is purely speculative.
Empty homes
Paradoxically, in the Islands there is a significant park of uninhabited homes. Thus, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), among the cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants, Santa Cruz de Tenerife appears at the head of empty homes in the entire state, with 17.3%, and in fourth place is Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (14.3%), behind Vigo (15.1%) and A Coruña (14.7%).
In the case of municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants, the list of uninhabited houses is headed by Tías (48%), ahead of Mos (Pontevedra), with 46.5%, Monforte de Lemos (Lugo), with 40%, and Aller (Asturias), with 38.9%; Among the top twenty there are also four others from the Archipelago: Antigua (37.2%), Mogán (33.7%), Santiago del Teide (35.7%) and San Miguel de Abona (33.1%).
It would be interesting to analyze the reasons why these houses are not on the rental market and look for alternatives that encourage this to happen, helping to significantly expand the current offer, especially in the two most populated cities of the Archipelago.
However, the Government of the Canary Islands has opted for a proposal as novel as it is surprising: to open the possibility of building new homes on rustic land, later nuanced by limiting it to public promotion housing. Although it is much less surprising when it comes from the same parties that pushed forward the 2017 Land Law, which ends planning, replaced by project urbanism, and which has been confirmed as a complete failure. More of the same.
Attack against the territory
A proposal that we strongly reject from the canarismo of progress, understanding that it is a dangerous occurrence alien to any model of sustainable and balanced development for the Islands. More homes are needed, yes, but there are other formulas to achieve them and give a fair response to citizen needs, but not attacking our landscape and destroying our fragile territory even more.
Pointing out, in the first place, compliance with the current Canary Islands Housing Plan, which has a financial sheet, more than 600 million, defining almost 6,000 new homes on land that already belongs to the Canary Islands community or ceded by the city councils. What needs to be done is to speed up the development of the Plan. It is true that the demand is not completely covered by the Plan, and that other actions are needed, but the municipalities have residential land where public housing can be built.
If even more land is needed, there are other more reasonable alternatives than the construction of new housing on rustic land. There is, for example, a category of urban land - the non-consolidated one - and another of developable land - ordered and unordered - that are not directly buildable, but whose characteristics are much more suitable for that purpose than the rustic one. I understand that it would make more sense, in any case, to consider speeding up the procedures to be able to build on these categories of land, rather than talking about authorizing the execution of homes in rustic land.
Housing Plan
I recognize that with current regulations there are limitations, and that is why from NC-bc we have defended from the city councils that they be provided with a legal tool that allows them to use more residential land for public housing, because if you wait to do it via local planning it is difficult to resolve. Although this could be favored by the new State Housing Law, the Canary Law would have to be changed, which, in this case, would be more than justified.
The demand for housing is mainly concentrated in large cities and tourist areas, where the vast majority of employment is concentrated. In any case, extending the construction of new residential buildings to rural areas, in addition to implying a significant dispersion, adds everything that its urbanization implies. That is, building more roads, transferring mobility and pollution problems to natural environments, installing electricity, water, sanitation, purification and educational and health infrastructures.
It must be remembered that, in February 2016, when the land law was being discussed, Fernando Clavijo assured that in the Canary Islands there were 54 million square meters of developable land, estimating that it would be sufficient for the next twenty years. However, now they have the idea of occupying the rustic land with buildings, a predatory measure of the territory that separates us from planning and leads us to the law of the jungle. Pure liberalism, like that of the Aznarist real estate bubble that so promoted speculation and corruption.
In short, this deeply developmental proposal of the conservative Canarian Government opens the door to real estate speculation in the rural environments of the islands and to the disappearance of a traditional way of life in the Archipelago, as well as the environmental and landscape values, essential for the sustainability and the future of the Canary Islands. For the good of the Canarian men and women of today and tomorrow, it is urgent that they rectify and cease in their efforts to fill the rustic soil with cranes to colonize it.
Román Rodríguez is president of Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-bc).
