The City Council will allocate plots of public equipment for the construction of subsidized housing for rent.

The Consistory initiates the procedures for the change of use, as long as it is not sanitary or educational, endorsed by a recent decree law of the Junta de Andalucía.

The Plenary will approve this week the realization of an inventory of soils for their adaptation, as well as an increase in the buildability for VPOs.

The Estepona City Council has initiated the procedures to provide the municipality, in the shortest possible time, with subsidized housing to meet the existing demand, especially for vulnerable people. Therefore, the plenary this March will give the green light to a series of measures aimed at streamlining projects. One of them will allow to allocate plots that currently have the qualification of public equipment in the current General Urban Development Plan (PGOU) to the construction of subsidized housing for rent.

The Consistory 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 amend the planning instruments when these soils have no specific use or are qualified with the generic use of public and social interest, that is, 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 soils may be used for rental housing or any other form of temporary occupation of a rotating nature to meet the temporary needs of groups with special difficulties of access to housing.

The City Council of Estepona wants to continue to maintain its commitment to citizens in housing, after the construction of 100 VPO in the area of Juan Benitez and the momentum of urban development for new ones in other parts of the municipality. To do this will be involved, with the utmost urgency, to respond to the current difficulties of access to housing.

The proposal to be brought to the plenary includes other important measures that involve all plots of municipal ownership for subsidized housing, whenever technically possible, they apply the increase in density of 10 percent provided for in the regional law.

In addition, a study will be carried out by the Municipal Technical Services on the residential plots owned by the Estepona City Council which, due to their characteristics and location, can be used entirely for housing subject to a public protection regime. In this sense, the aim is to increase their density by 20 percent, so as to allow for the greatest possible number of subsidized housing units, in order to proceed with their sale in accordance with the legally established procedure so that they can be built as soon as possible.

Municipal impulse

The Estepona City Council has been sensitive, for more than a decade, to the needs of the citizens and the most vulnerable population in terms of access to housing. Since then, it has been working on the execution of the necessary administrative procedures to obtain land for the creation of subsidized housing. This municipal determination made possible the construction and delivery of a hundred VPO in the area of Juan Benitez, as well as in promoting the development of urban planning to get more land for housing of this type in other areas of the city as Camino de Cortes (Atalaya), Arroyo Vaquero or Guadalobón.

This work of the local government to promote urban development to have plots where subsidized housing is built has been of great importance, considering that the town lacked in 2011 of municipal land where to build these properties.