Caselles clarifies that funding for the Municipal Housing Plan comes “after the Government launched its grant scheme”
The government team spokesperson points out that, in terms of housing, the PSOE’s local and regional administrations left Benidorm with no properties or initiatives
Benidorm’s government team spokesperson and Councillor for Urban Planning, Lourdes Caselles, has clarified that “funding for the Municipal Housing Plan” is being made available “now that the Central Government, which is responsible for housing policy, has launched the call for grants for the preparation” of this type of plan. Caselles was responding to a statement issued by the Socialist group one day after Mayor Toni Pérez announced that the City Council would apply for funding from the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030 to draw up a Municipal Housing Plan.
“Grants are applied for when they are put out to tender, within the established deadlines and provided that the requirements are met,” Caselles stressed, adding that “as always, we will work to ensure that Benidorm secures funding from higher levels of government”. On this point, she added that “the one who is late here is Pedro Sánchez’s Government, the same Government that has acknowledged to Europe that it will not meet the commitments it made on social housing, which were supposed to be implemented using European funds”.
Having clarified this point, the Popular Party spokesperson criticised the local PSOE for questioning the steps the City Council is taking on housing, either by making land available to the regional government to build public housing —with a development of 117 homes already underway in Poniente— or by applying for a grant to draw up a Municipal Housing Plan and establish an Observatory to assess the situation and housing needs in Benidorm.
After defending these measures, Caselles stressed that “the only ones who should remain silent are the members of the Socialist Party, which has absolutely never done anything for housing, not just in Benidorm but across the entire Valencian Community”. She went on to recall that the years of PSOE governments in the city and the regional government resulted in “zero homes built and zero initiatives”.
She pointed out that it was a PP government in the Valencian regional government that built the last two public housing developments made available to residents, in 2010, and that “it is now a PP government in Valencia that is building public housing in Poniente”. In light of this, Caselles urged the local PSOE to abandon “populism and get on board with working for and on behalf of Benidorm, rather than against it, which is what they have been doing throughout this 2023–2027 administration”.