Beatriz Retuerta |
Guadalajara (EFE).- Attracting new settlers is the challenge of the rural world. The province of Guadalajara is one of those that suffers the most from depopulation, however, behind this phenomenon lies a reality that does not favor the arrival of new neighbors: the shortage of housing.
The lack of free housing is not a reality unique to the less populated areas of the province and, although the context of each area is different, ultimately, the shortage of houses in which to live is a problem.
This was pointed out to EFE by Pedro Hernández, mayor of Cobeta, a small town in the Señorío de Molina region, one of the most depopulated in Spain.
“The main problem is this, there is no other, because if there is no housing, there can be no work”, affirms this councilor, who assures that today they have roads, fiber optics and even coworking spaces in the municipalities of the area, but there are no homes to rent or buy.
“The administration, just as it has provided us with fiber optics and has improved roads, the following aid has to be so that the council can buy one or two old houses and help me with the project, architect and it is easy for me to build five or six houses,” Hernandez proposes.
The school reopened in 2021 after forty years closed
In fact, Cobeta can be taken as an example of the fight against depopulation, since even in 2021 the school reopened after 40 years closed thanks to the arrival of young families with children.
This municipality had a building from the old Civil Guard barracks “where 8 homes have been built”, a project that the previous mayor began and has completed.
“I have 13 houses rented as the City Council at popular prices of 150 or 200 euros,” explains the councilor, who points out that this means the Consistory barely 30,000 euros of rent per year “but what it reports is much more.”
This reality of lack of housing is not alien to the ‘other Guadalajara’, as they call the Corredor del Henares area, which has seen its population grow exponentially in recent decades.
The difficulty of obtaining a rental
This is the case, for example, of El Casar, a municipality where there is no problem of housing to buy, yes, not at affordable prices since the profile consists of chalets or independent houses of medium or large size and with a plot, but where looking for something for rent is very complicated, as teachers, workers or civil guards who come to the municipality for work can tell.
The mayoress of the municipality, María José Valle, told EFE that the real estate offer “is all houses or chalets, and that affects them,” adding that in some cases these chalets are rented, but at “exorbitant prices.”
The mayoress of El Casar assures that “here there is no stop building” since hers is a municipality with services, growing and a step away from Alcalá de Henares and Guadalajara capital with cheaper purchase prices in the same characteristics.
For this reason, its objective is to encourage these developers to “make promotions that are also rental-type.”
Closed houses that their owners do not want to sell or rent
Not far from there, in Mohernado -with some two hundred registered residents-, a flat that goes on sale doesn’t last a week on the market. This is how its mayor, Iván González, assures EFE.
“It is not a current problem. It comes from many years ago, because 90% of the owners where there is land do not want to sell nor do they sell closed houses, while there is a lot of demand for housing”, explains this mayor, who assures that “there are easily more than 40 closed houses and that they will fall apart because they don’t want to rent them and some can rent them”.
González points out his need to have housing to try to retain the young people who, when they cannot find a house, leave the municipality, “and they do not return,” he affirms.
He acknowledges that “geographically, Mohernando is in a privileged place, a step away from the capital and the Henares Corridor is already spreading and from there every week 15 or 20 people arrive looking for houses for sale or rent apart from those of the municipality ”.
The City Council has land to promote 15 chalets in an already urbanized area, which is what González wants to promote publicly-privately or as a cooperative, but for what he needs the help of the regional or central administration, since his municipality does not have budget for these types of initiatives.
“I’m looking forward to some private promoter promoting something,” acknowledges the councilor.