For almost three decades, not a single public housing unit promoted by the Government of the Canary Islands was built in Lanzarote. Almost three decades without a block, without a crane, without a real policy capable of responding to one of the most basic needs of any person: having a home.
These were years and years of governments presided over by Coalición Canaria in which many things were discussed, many projects were announced, and resources were found for many priorities. But public housing was relegated until it practically disappeared from political action on our island.
When the Socialist Party came to the Government of the Canary Islands in 2019, with Ángel Víctor Torres as president, we found ourselves facing that reality. And changing it was not easy.
I want to especially recognize the work of Sebastián Franquis, Chano, then Minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing. His involvement with Lanzarote was decisive in breaking an inertia that seemed to be installed forever. Also that of Maribel Santana at the head of the Canary Housing Institute, a committed woman who understood from the first moment the urgency we had on our island.
I know well how much work there was behind it because, as president of the Cabildo, I made housing one of the permanent demands to the Government of the Canary Islands. We could not resign ourselves to Lanzarote continuing to be an island where public housing simply did not exist as a real policy.
And, moreover, we had to do it in an extraordinarily difficult legislative term.
A few months after the term began, a global pandemic arrived. For months, all administrations had to concentrate a huge part of our efforts on what was truly urgent: saving lives, protecting people, sustaining public services, and preventing thousands of families and businesses from being left behind.
It could have been the perfect excuse to do nothing more.
It was not.
Despite that crisis, despite the administrative difficulties, and despite starting practically from scratch after almost three decades of paralysis, the Government of Ángel Víctor Torres launched the Canary Islands Housing Plan, and Lanzarote finally returned to the public housing map.
From this came the 201 homes in Maneje that we see built today in Arrecife.
The first in 26 years.
And I say this with enormous pride. Not for partisan reasons or to put a political flag on some buildings, but because behind each of those doors there will be a family. More than 200 families who will be able to receive the keys to a home and begin a new chapter in their lives with the security that having a home provides.
That is what politics is for.
That is why it is especially irritating to see those in government now taking photographs in front of these homes as if they had appeared during their term. The homes in Maneje are not the result of the management of Fernando Clavijo or Oswaldo Betancort. They were planned, financed, and launched with Ángel Víctor Torres as President of the Government of the Canary Islands and during my time at the head of the Cabildo.
Files have memory, even if some politicians prefer not to have it.
What is worrying is not that they try to take credit for what others did. What is truly serious is that, more than three years after Coalición Canaria returned to the Government of the Canary Islands and Oswaldo Betancort took over the Presidency of the Cabildo, we find ourselves back at square one.
What new development can they point to as a result of their management?
What new public housing have they been able to launch from scratch during these years?
The answer explains a lot of what is happening while, at the same time, the price of housing and rent continues to move away from the possibilities of thousands of workers, young people, and families in Lanzarote.
And if there is a place where this situation is especially painful, it is Arrecife.
The capital concentrates two out of every three applicants for protected housing on the entire island. It is the municipality where the need is greatest and where access to rent has become an impossible race for too many families. However, after more than three years in office, the government of PP and Coalición Canaria has not been able to generate new land that allows for a proportional response to that need.
To this is added their refusal to use the tools offered by the Housing Law to intervene in areas where prices are driving people out.
It is not a lack of resources to make it possible, it is a lack of political will.
Coalición Canaria and the Popular Party have decided not to apply those measures that can limit abuses in the rental market and protect those who have less capacity to compete in it. They have chosen to protect the interests of large landlords and large holders rather than use all available tools to protect families.
That is their housing model. And that is the model that Oswaldo Betancort has shown to assume and defend.
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