Estepona will allocate public facility plots for the construction of protected rental housing

The City Council of Estepona will allocate plots currently classified as public facilities in the General Urban Planning Plan (PGOU) to the construction of subsidized housing for rent, as well as carry out an inventory of lands to assign their residential use, as reported by the Council this Monday.

The measures will be taken to the Plenary session in March, where they are expected to be approved with the absolute majority of the PP government team, aiming to provide the municipality with subsidized housing to meet the existing demand, especially for vulnerable people.

As specified, in the March plenary session, a series of measures aimed at expediting projects will be approved, including allocating plots currently classified as public facilities in the PGOU for the construction of subsidized rental housing.

For this purpose, the Council bases its actions on the Decree-Law 1/2025, dated February 24, of urgent measures in housing matters by the Junta de Andalucía, which contemplates the possibility of constructing public rental housing on facilities plots, without the need to modify planning instruments when these lands have no specific use. Nor when the lands are classified for generic use of public and social interest, that is, they are not reserved for health or educational use.

Thus, they highlighted that the municipal technical services will conduct a study and an inventory of the most suitable plots to assign residential use for housing or allocational accommodation, in accordance with the legislation.

In this way, these lands can be allocated to rental housing or any other form of temporary occupation of a rotational nature, aimed at addressing temporary housing needs for groups with special access difficulties.

10% Density Increase

On the other hand, the Council has pointed out that the proposal to be presented at the Plenary includes other measures that imply applying a density increase of 10 percent, as provided by the regional law, to all municipal-owned plots designated for subsidized housing, whenever technically possible.

In addition, they have noted that the municipal technical services will conduct a study on the residential plots owned by the City Council that, due to their characteristics and location, can be entirely allocated to housing under some form of public protection.

In this regard, they aim to increase their density by 20 percent, to allow the maximum number of subsidized homes possible, in order to proceed with their disposal, according to the legally established procedure, so that they can be undertaken in the shortest possible time.

Municipal Drive

The City Council has been working for more than a decade on the necessary administrative procedures to obtain lands, with the aim of allocating them to the creation of subsidized housing. In this regard, it recalled that the town lacked municipal land for building these properties in 2011.

This municipal commitment enabled the construction and delivery of a hundred subsidized housing units in the Juan Benítez area, as well as the promotion of urban planning development to obtain more land for this type of housing in other areas of the city such as Camino de Cortes (Atalaya), Arroyo Vaquero, or Guadalobón.