The socialist leader accuses the current president of the Cabildo of living off inherited projects, but during her term, 160 social housing units for which 13.78 million euros had been budgeted were not materialized.
Housing does not admit selective memory
Public housing has rightly become one of the major political and social issues in Lanzarote. Rental prices, the scarcity of affordable housing, and the difficulties many families face in accessing a home have turned the housing problem into an emergency that no administration can ignore.
Precisely for this reason, it is necessary for the political debate to be conducted with memory.
María Dolores Corujo once again places housing at the center of her criticism of Oswaldo Betancort. The former president of the Cabildo maintains that the current insular government has gone more than three years without promoting a new public housing development and accuses Betancort of presenting himself as the protagonist of projects that were planned during the previous term.
The criticism deserves to be heard. But it also deserves to be contrasted with Corujo's own management when she was at the head of the Cabildo.
Maneje: an action with several fathers
The 201 public housing units in Maneje were not created during Oswaldo Betancort's current term. The project is part of the Canary Islands Housing Plan 2020-2025 and was promoted during the regional government presided over by Ángel Víctor Torres, with Sebastián Franquis at the head of the Ministry of Housing, and with the collaboration of the Cabildo of Lanzarote and the City Council of Arrecife.
In April 2023, with María Dolores Corujo still as president of the Cabildo, the Government of the Canary Islands announced the contracting of the works for 134 of the 201 housing units planned in Maneje, with an investment of 19.6 million euros.
Official information from the Government of the Canary Islands indicates that the land had been ceded by the City Council of Arrecife and acknowledges the collaboration of the Cabildo and the City Council.
Therefore, it would be unfair to deny Corujo's political participation in the promotion of that action. But it would also be incorrect to turn Maneje into an exclusive work of the socialist Cabildo. It was a collaborative action between administrations.
If a promotion can be politically claimed by a government because it was promoted during its term, even if the funding and execution correspond to another administration, that same criterion should apply to the current Cabildo when it buys land, acquires homes, or collaborates with the Government of Canarias.
The fact that Corujo should not forget
In the budget of the Cabildo of Lanzarote for 2021, during the presidency of María Dolores Corujo, there is an allocation of 13,782,000 euros specifically for the acquisition of 160 homes for social rent.
This is not an interpretation by the opposition. It is written in the official budget of the island institution itself.
The allocation appeared within the program called "Social Housing Observatory." During that term, there was, therefore, budgeted money and a perfectly defined objective: to acquire 160 homes for social rent.
In January 2023, a few months before the end of that legislature, the then councilor Jacobo Medina denounced that the Cabildo had not materialized the purchase of any homes for this purpose and recalled that the credit approved for investments amounted to almost 24 million, of which about 13.8 million corresponded to the acquisition of social housing.
Months later, in the extraordinary plenary session on housing held in May 2023, Coalición Canaria again denounced that this money had ended up being allocated to other actions and that a proposal to acquire 160 homes in Arrecife for almost 17 million euros had been discarded.
It is worth making a journalistic clarification: the budgetary allocation of 13.782 million is documentarily accredited; the accusations about the final destination of the credit come from the opposition and must be attributed as such.
But the planned 160 homes did not become 160 homes acquired by the Cabildo during that term.
Does this mean that Corujo did nothing?
No. And it would be a mistake to write it that way.
During that period, there was an important change in Lanzarote's public housing policy. After decades without new public developments, the Government of Canarias launched the Housing Plan 2020-2025, and Lanzarote reappeared in the regional planning.
Maneje is the main expression of that change. In April 2023, the Government of the Canary Islands spoke of 201 homes in Maneje as the first public housing built in Lanzarote in 27 years and announced new actions within the Housing Plan.
Recognizing that reality does not weaken the argument. It strengthens it. One thing is to recognize Corujo's successes and another is to accept that her term was impeccable management in terms of housing.
Nor would it be fair to say that Betancort has done nothing
The socialist criticism also cannot be reduced to stating that the current insular government has done nothing.
The Cabildo has acquired 42 homes in Playa Blanca, intended to be incorporated into the public housing stock through their transfer for affordable rent. In addition, there are another 76 homes in Playa Blanca whose acquisition has guaranteed financing, with contributions from the Government of the Canary Islands and the Cabildo.
These actions cannot yet be presented as dozens of new developments built and delivered. The 42 homes are an acquisition and the other 76 are in the process of acquisition. The plots of land purchased for future developments are, for the moment, just land.
But it is also not correct to state that there is no action whatsoever.
The underlying problem: who takes the credit? Housing policy does not work in watertight compartments.
The Government of the Canary Islands has an essential role. Municipalities provide land and carry out actions. Cabildos can acquire land, housing, collaborate financially, and develop insular policies.
Maneje is a good example: the City Council provided the land, the Government of the Canary Islands assumed the promotion and main financing, and the Cabildo collaborated.
So, whose homes are they? The most honest answer would be: those of the administrations that made it possible for them to exist.
That is why it is difficult to maintain a discourse in which homes initiated during one term are exclusively the merit of the government that promoted them, but actions initiated or developed during the next term are automatically "inherited projects" and, therefore, without any merit for whoever manages them.
The mirror must work in both directions
The question that should be asked now is not who has more right to take the credit.
The question is much simpler: How many new public homes does Lanzarote need, and how many of them are actually built, bought, and delivered?
A family looking for housing does not live off a press release. They do not live off a press conference. They do not live off a budget allocation. And they do not live off a promise either.
They need a key.
And they need to be able to pay the rent.
That should be the definitive indicator.
Corujo has the right to criticize Betancort
Of course. The opposition is there to scrutinize the Government. And Betancort must answer for his decisions, his delays, and his results.
But the criticism would be much more solid if it also incorporated self-criticism.
During Corujo's presidency, 13.782 million euros were budgeted to acquire 160 homes for social rent, and those homes did not end up forming part of the park acquired by the Cabildo.
Meanwhile, Maneje did advance, but fundamentally within the Canary Islands Government's Housing Plan and thanks to the collaboration of various administrations.
And today, with Betancort, there are concrete actions for the acquisition of housing and land, although still insufficient to resolve the dimension of the problem.
That is probably what an honest analysis should say: neither socialist propaganda nor Coalición Canaria propaganda.
Housing cannot become a war of newspaper clippings
Lanzarote urgently needs public housing. It needs land, financing, administrative agility, and coordination between the Canary Islands Government, the Cabildo, and the town councils.
Because every year that passes without sufficiently increasing the public housing stock has very concrete consequences: families paying rents they cannot afford, young people delaying their emancipation, and workers ending up leaving the island because they cannot find a place to live.
That is why housing deserves more than a partisan battle. And it also deserves memory.
Corujo can reproach Betancort for not having yet generated enough new public housing. It is a legitimate criticism.
But Betancort can hold up the same mirror and recall that during the socialist mandate there were 160 planned homes and 13.782 million budgeted to acquire them that did not end up becoming those 160 homes.
And probably neither of them should feel completely satisfied.
Because while the parties argue about who deserves the medal, Lanzarote continues to need houses.
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