The City Council requests that the draft of this Law be suspended to reach a consensus with the municipalities through a working table, as was repeatedly requested before the publication of the text.
The mayor of Mogán, Onalia Bueno, considers that this rule must also analyze in detail the vacation home on each island and even municipality to respond appropriately to the idiosyncrasies of each one.
After an exhaustive analysis of the draft Law on sustainable management of tourist use in housing from the Ministry of Tourism and Employment of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Mogán City Council concludes that this law will prevent the implementation of new holiday homes and will eradicate almost all of the already existing due to the urban and administrative requirements for the town councils as well as technical requirements for the owners of these properties, practically impossible to comply with. Furthermore, it opposes the supervisory role that it grants to local administrations, making them responsible for verifying whether existing vacation homes comply with the classified activity regime, a procedure that they consider should correspond to the island councils. For all these reasons, we request that this draft be suspended until a new text is agreed upon through a working group with all the municipalities of the Canary Islands.
The Mogán City Council agrees with the need to organize and regulate holiday homes in the Archipelago so that they can offer quality standards while coexisting with long-term residential uses, and that the supply of homes for residents is not reduced. However, it considers that this bill will not resolve the housing emergency problem – to which it alludes to support its articles – as long as the promotion of public housing continues to be so scarce and the current legal regime does not encourage owners. to put the large volume of current empty homes under long-term rental regime.
It is a mistake to demonize vacation homes. Mogán has unlocked land to be able to build 460 VPOs in the face of the inaction of the Government of the Canary Islands in the last decade to increase the public housing stock.
In the specific case of Mogán, of the 16.896 homes, 2.040 are vacation homes (12,07%) and 5.697 (33,72%) are empty, data that reflects that the problem is not precisely in vacation homes. In addition, the City Council has unlocked the Partial Plan of Loma de Pino Seco so that its total area of 72.806 square meters can only house Officially Protected Housing (VPO). Currently there are about 200 built and another 350 are pending construction.
Likewise, the City Council, within the framework of its first Municipal Housing Plan initiated last year, is working to build new VPO developments in Arguineguín, Veneguera, El Horno and Puerto Rico, which will add a total of 320 of these homes. To all this, the Plenary has recently agreed to process the file to establish the so-called 'Provisional Municipal Ordinance for the management of the municipal plot Lot 1', located in Puerto Rico, specifically in the streets behind the CEO Motor Grande. The objective is to organize it in such a way that it is possible to exploit its capacity to the maximum. Thanks to this, a building with 11.600 VPO will be able to be built on these 110 square meter lands.
The problem is that since Law 4/2017, of July 13, on Land and Protected Natural Spaces of the Canary Islands came into force, a mechanism had not been enabled to encourage the construction of VPO due to the lack of land for it. Precisely the developable lands not developed for this purpose within a period of 10 years from the entry into force of the standard became classified as rural. It is now, with the new decree law on urgent measures regarding housing, that the unlocking of these lands for the construction of VPOs and facing the housing emergency is allowed.
It also works against the fact that the modules applicable to protectable actions in housing have not attracted private developers to invest in the construction of VPO, given that until 2024 they had not adjusted prices to the market. In short, since the last real estate crisis in 2008, the Canary Islands have practically not built public or private officially promoted housing. It is from this year that entrepreneurs have seen an attraction to invest in VPO.
Intrusion of municipal powers and requirements that are impossible to comply with
The mayor affirms that the draft law does not mandate tourist use in housing but rather leads to its disappearance for several reasons. The first, because it de facto annuls the urban planning powers of the town councils. It requires them, as stated in article 4, to reserve in their planning instruments at least 90% of the buildable area exclusively for residential use. Furthermore, the remaining 10% would not be allocated exclusively to holiday homes, as other uses permitted on residential plots would be included, such as professional offices. Currently there are municipalities, including Mogán, with more than 10% of holiday homes, so after the entry into force of the Law, to comply with this point, many would have to be disabled, it can be understood, indiscriminately.
Article 4 also establishes prohibitions in the aforementioned planning instruments that restrict and exponentially limit the possibility of enabling tourist use of lodging. To all this we must add the requirements demanded in article 5 that the town councils must include in their planning to enable the use of vacation homes, which for owners are practically impossible to comply with and very expensive.
All of the above translates into additional administrative burden on city councils, which must process a modification of their respective urban planning instruments in order to enable tourist uses with the requirements of article 4, something that is very unlikely to be achieved in the short term. and medium term. And furthermore, if these requirements are met, the owners must comply with the requirements of article 5.
The administrative burden, however, does not stop there, since this Law attributes a supervisory role to the town councils. Point 2 of the first transitional provision establishes that within a period of 3 months from the entry into force of the rule, the Councils will send to the town councils the list of holiday homes in their municipality so that they can verify whether they comply with the classified activity regime. However, the local administrations will then have another 3 months to send the list to the Island Council of the holiday homes that do not comply, so that it can instruct the procedure of impossibility of continuing with the activity.
This is impossible for the town councils to comply with, which become mere administrators of their respective councils, which are the ones who receive the responsible declarations from the owners to enable vacation homes. With what means is a city council going to complete this inspection within the required period?
Going further, the Law establishes for owners a period of five years from its entry into force to comply with the technical and equipment requirements, having three months, once this period ends, to present to the Cabildo the responsible declaration that they It will allow, if everything is correct, to continue 5 more years of activity. However, when 10 years have passed since the entry into force of the Law, they must automatically cease activity unless the new regime established therein is complied with.
It is this last issue, included in the second transitional provision, that will lead to a true extermination of vacation homes. The reason is simple: the owners are not going to make an investment of considerable magnitude to meet the requirements set out in this Law if after 10 years they have to cease their activity because the town councils have not been able to process urban planning with the parameters established. requires them or for not exercising oversight over the vacation homes themselves.
It follows that the Government of the Canary Islands puts the survival of holiday homes in the hands of the town councils, knowing that it is impossible to comply with everything that is imposed on them, a responsibility that the Mogano City Council profoundly rejects, which in turn proposes a working table in which all municipalities intervene to achieve a model that does allow for the regulation of vacation homes.
Bueno requests trust in the town councils to zone tourist uses based on the situation of the corresponding municipality, some brief and clear requirements that in turn guarantee land for social housing and, very importantly, that the processing of planning instruments is facilitated.
The Mogán City Council will present allegations to this law after meeting with the general director of Planning, Training and Tourism Promotion of the Government of the Canary Islands, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Martínez, to whom the disagreement with the approach of this Law, which invades municipal powers, has been conveyed. and it is also totally restrictive and impossible to comply with for small vacation home owners.
