The City Council initiates the modification of the municipal ordinance that will give preference to registered residents for access to a VPO (housing development project)

The Consistory will include in the regulations as a criterion of preference to have at least 3 years of administrative residence in the municipality.

The Estepona City Council has initiated the process to amend the Regulatory Ordinance of the Municipal Public Registry of Applicants for Subsidized Housing in Estepona, approved by the full City Council in September 2012, with the aim of giving preference to those registered in the municipality when it comes to accessing a VPO. The measure was advanced by the mayor, José María García Urbano, in the plenary session last August, and now, once the municipal regulations have been adapted, the draft amendment has gone out for public consultation.

The amendment aims to include as a criterion for the selection of successful bidders and alternate bidders the registration in the municipality of Estepona, with preference being given to those with administrative residence equal to or greater than 3 years at the time of application. Among all previous registrations, will be selected by seniority of registration.

Estepona City Council thus adapts its Ordinance Regulating the Municipal Public Registry of Applicants for Subsidized Housing to Law 1/2010, Regulating the Right to Housing in Andalusia.

The Consistory has also initiated proceedings to provide the municipality, in the shortest possible time, subsidized housing to meet the existing demand, especially vulnerable people. Therefore, the Plenary of this past March gave the green light to a series of measures aimed at expediting projects. One of them is to allocate plots of land that are currently classified as public facilities in the current General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) for the construction of subsidized rental housing.

The City Council takes as a basis the Decree-Law 1/2025, of February 24, of urgent measures on housing, recently approved by the Junta de Andalucía, which provides for the possibility of building public rental housing on plots of equipment, without the need to modify the planning instruments when these soils have no specific use or are qualified with the generic use of public and social interest, ie, that are not reserved for health or educational use.

Therefore, the Consistory will perform, through its Municipal Technical Services, a study and inventory of those most suitable plots to assign, in accordance with the provisions of the aforementioned law and the municipal PGOU, residential use for housing or housing dotacional. In

this way, these plots of land may be used for rental housing or any other form of temporary occupancy of a revolving nature to meet the temporary needs of groups with special difficulties in accessing housing.