The first answer is clear: In Lanzarote we have shoddy politicians, and I include myself.
It was mid-2010. I was in the first meeting that was held to assess a solution to the houses that were falling down, both in Titerroy and Valterra. It was in the housing office that the Government of the Canary Islands has on Avenida Medular. We were Inés Rojas, then Minister of the Government and responsible for housing; Cándido Reguera, then mayor of Arrecife; Pedro de Armas, then Councilor for Urban Planning of Arrecife; Emilia Perdomo, then Councilor for Social Affairs; and I, Councilor for Neighborhoods. No technician.
To begin with, the meeting is held to put out a fire, not as a task of social and urban planning of the City.
The fire to put out was that a short time before a person had died in Titerroy, on Timbayba street, because the roof had fallen on him.
The house in question is one of the 120 that make up the Tite Roy Gatra neighborhood, delivered between the end of 1957 and the beginning of 1958. The first neighborhood that then began to form the now populous neighborhood of Titerroy; which was then called Maneje, until in 1961 the plenary session of the Arrecife City Council agrees that it be called Santa Coloma. Since 1990 it has been called Titerroy, popularly derived from the primitive Tite Roy Gatra, difficult to pronounce because it is long.
The 200 houses of the Social Institute of the Navy, built with stones and salt water, were delivered in 1954. The same as the 120 houses of the aforementioned Tite Roy Gatra neighborhood, the 160 of the José Antonio neighborhood were also built with stones and salt water.
Therefore, a city council that knows what it is doing (in urban planning matters) should have worried about some houses built in that way, once 50 years have passed since their construction.
Obviously, the Arrecife City Council does not have a technical office or an Urban Planning area that knows and acts in what corresponds to it. That said, a mayor or a councilor for urban planning does not have to know about architecture or engineering. That's why we pay the Real Estate Tax, from which municipal architects and engineers earn very good salaries.
