The municipal plenary has authorised a multi-year expenditure of €24.7 million to construct 115 affordable rental homes on the Pepe Gonçalvez plot, between La Minilla and Escaleritas. The funding will be entirely from the City Council's own resources.
The City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has given the green light this Friday to the construction of 115 protected homes for affordable rent in the Escaleritas neighbourhood. The ordinary plenary session in July authorised a multi-year expenditure of €24,718,224.03, which will be distributed over the years 2026, 2027, and 2028.
The development will be built on the VP-03 Pepe Gonçalvez plot, a site bordered by Virgen del Pilar and Concejal García Feo streets, at the junction of the La Minilla and Escaleritas neighbourhoods. With this initiative, the council is expanding its public housing stock, which is one of the priorities of municipal policy regarding access to decent housing.
The plenary agreement includes authorisation to raise the percentages set by local finance legislation, a necessary procedure to distribute the investment over several years. Thus, €440,668.66 corresponds to 2026, €10,386,371.20 to 2027, and €13,891,184.17 to 2028.
The councillor for Planning, Urban Development, and Housing, Mauricio Roque, explained that this development was initially intended to be financed by the Canary Islands Government through the Canary Housing Plan. However, after drafting the projects and requesting funding, the application was rejected, prompting the City Council to decide to cover the costs with its own resources.
“These 115 homes were initially planned to be fully funded by the Canary Islands Government. After drafting the projects and requesting that funding, the application was rejected. In light of this situation, the City Council decided to undertake the project with its own funds, reviewing both the costs and the project to make it viable,” Roque stated.
The councillor emphasised that this agreement guarantees the necessary funding to move the development forward and advances the municipal strategy to increase the public housing stock, which already has over 400 homes in progress, to which these 115 will now be added.
The authorisation of the multi-year expenditure constitutes another step in the administrative processing of the project, whose contracting file was approved last June by the General Directorate of Urbanism and Housing. The next step will be the tendering of the works, which is expected to take place over the coming months.
This development is set against a backdrop of high housing demand in the capital of Gran Canaria, where rental prices have continued to rise in recent years. The construction of protected housing has become one of the key tools to facilitate access to a home for people with medium and low incomes.
The residents of Escaleritas and La Minilla will see a vacant plot transformed into a residential complex that will help address one of the city's main social demands. The project is part of other municipal initiatives in various parts of the municipality, such as the promotion of housing in the Tamaraceite neighbourhood or the rehabilitation of buildings in the historic centre.
Funding from municipal resources represents a significant budgetary effort for the council, but it also provides greater agility to the project, as it does not depend on the timelines of other administrations. The distribution of expenditure over three years allows this investment to be balanced with other planned municipal actions.
Once the tendering is completed and the works are awarded, construction is expected to begin in 2027, with an estimated execution period of about two years. The homes will be designated for affordable rent, with prices set according to current protected housing regulations.
The City Council has reminded that this development is part of a broader plan aiming to exceed 500 public homes in the coming years, combining new construction with the purchase of properties and the rehabilitation of existing buildings.
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