The City Council makes available to the central government six municipal plots where it could build more than one hundred subsidized housing units.

The Consistory thus facilitates Estepona’s participation in the initiative of the central government, which has announced that it will mobilize up to 23,000 million euros to boost housing supply in Spain.

The Estepona City Council offers the central government six municipal plots with capacity for the construction of 109 subsidized housing. The proposal will be taken to the plenary this March. These are soils with uses compatible with social housing projects located in areas such as Casas del Padrón, Llanos de la Boladilla and Camino de Cortes. The municipal proposal responds to the announcement recently made by the Government of Spain to mobilize up to 23,000 million euros public and private to boost the supply of housing, and finance the construction of 15,000 units per year in Spain through the fund ‘Spain Grows’.

The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, explains that, “given this announcement, this City Council, based on the legal principle of collaboration between administrations, makes available to the central government these plots available in Estepona so that, after the relevant assessment, they can be taken into account for the construction of housing announced, so that Estepona can be favored by this measure announced by the Government”. In this way, says the alderman, “is to facilitate the Government to expedite the processing of your project so that our city can also participate in it.

The plots made available to the central government are part of a bag of land on which the City Council has been working to activate various initiatives to provide the municipality with new subsidized housing. These are two plots in the area of Casas del Padrón, for 22 and 23 vpo; two others in Llanos de la Boladilla, for 9 and 17 homes; and two plots in Camino de Cortes, for 17 and 21 homes.

The municipal government team has had as one of its priorities since 2011 to implement measures to promote access to housing for people and groups with greater difficulties for it. The result of these policies are the one hundred subsidized housing units (VPO) built and delivered in the area of Juan Benitez, in the northern part of the city.

At present, and after years of work to obtain land to expand the stock of subsidized housing, other mechanisms are being devised to provide the city with more than 1,200 homes. In this regard, there are already short-term initiatives. Four plots of land will be put out to tender for the construction of another 200 public rental housing units. These properties, which will be located both in the east and west of the municipality, will have an affordable rental price to facilitate access to housing for young people or residents with fewer resources.

In addition to these initiatives, there are two other projects that will involve the construction of 308 subsidized housing units in the Camino de Cortes sector. Specifically, two preliminary urban planning projects have already been approved and building permits are being processed for the construction of 117 subsidized housing units in the area of Camino de Cortes Sur; and on the other hand, a bidding process is being finalized for two other plots that will allow the construction of 199 subsidized housing units in Camino de Cortes Norte.

At the same time, the Estepona City Council Plenary unanimously approved the compatibility of municipal use that will enable the authorization to allocate a total of 36 municipal plots for the construction of subsidized housing. This measure is part of the Decree-Law 1/2025 of urgent measures on housing of the Junta de Andalucía. The regional text allows the construction of public rental housing on plots of land that have not been used for residential purposes until now, without the need to modify the planning instruments, which allows to speed up VPO projects.

Since last April, the date on which the City Council joined this regional initiative, municipal technicians have been working on the list of public plots that could have this social use. Based on the parameters set out in the General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) of Estepona, a total of 738 homes could be built on these plots, which are distributed throughout the municipality.

Among these plots are now made available to the central government to raise more than a hundred VPO in the city.