Santa Cruz de Tenerife (EFE) homes in the neighborhoods of La Salud and Cepsa.
Patricia Hernández has detailed in a press conference that only two buildings of 16 homes will have elevators, out of a total of 178 homes that are being rehabilitated according to the City Council, and those that will have this facility correspond to projects signed in July 2020 , when she was the mayoress of the capital of Tenerife.
Hernández has lamented “the ineffective management” by the consistory of the funds allocated to the Urban Renewal and Regeneration Areas (ARRU) and has specified that this project is included in the State Housing Plan 2018-2021, which establishes collaboration between Ministry of Housing, Government of the Canary Islands, councils and town halls for the rehabilitation of homes.
“Only the two elevators that I left signed within this program are currently running in two buildings in the La Salud neighborhood, that is, 32 neighbors will be able to enjoy this installation in their block of a total of 178 homes that are currently rehabilitate in the city. And the rest? What happens with the rest of the buildings that are left without an elevator? ”, Questioned the socialist spokesperson.
In his opinion, the only difference is “who left the project signed” in 2020, which had the technical and economic guarantee to end “the suffering” suffered by people who live on the upper floors of these neighborhoods, such as in La Salud, where he has said that there are older neighbors who spend days without leaving their home.
In his opinion, there is an isolation induced by the lack of elevators and that affects daily issues such as taking out the garbage, doing the shopping or even when someone has a baby or health services must go.
“Our rehabilitation approach contemplated the incorporation of these elevators in Chimisay, La Salud and in the Cepsa neighborhood, responding in this way in a global and widespread way to a common problem of many buildings in the city. We cannot understand why it is not carried out because the City Council has a feasibility study for all the affected neighborhoods”, added Patricia Hernández.
There is a feasibility project that has the endorsement of municipal technicians, elevators whose average investment is around 50,000 euros “and that can be executed and that is demonstrated in the two that we leave ready”, the socialist spokesperson reiterated, for whom “It is miserable that these neighbors are intentionally condemned to live cloistered in their homes without being able to carry out their daily lives in a normal way.”
“There are no first- and second-class citizens, this has been forgotten by José Manuel Bermúdez once again,” continued Hernández, who has reproached the mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife for deliberately ignoring the mobility problems that this situation entails and that condemns the neighbors “to live in a jail, in a cage.”
For this reason, he has added that he will request the appearance of the government group in a next plenary session of the municipal corporation so that “it can show its face and give explanations” regarding this situation, and has reiterated that there is a deliberate decision “not to improve the lives of the people” who live in these neighborhoods. EFE
