Zumaia: General Urban Plan Fails to Address Housing Crisis

The municipal General Urban Planning Plan does not adequately tackle the housing crisis in the municipality, according to EH Bildu.

Detailed urban planning map with various colored zones and lines, suggesting future housing projects.
IA

Detailed urban planning map with various colored zones and lines, suggesting future housing projects.

In Zumaia, the EH Bildu party has stated that the municipal General Urban Planning Plan (PGOU) does not provide an adequate solution to the housing crisis affecting the municipality, citing a lack of ambition and a conservative approach.

In the face of the current housing crisis, the PGOU is the most crucial municipal tool to address the situation. However, the party believes it is a mistake for the plan to only include an eight-year time horizon, given that previous plans generally had a validity of around twenty years. The current approach falls short in responding to future needs.
Regarding the number of homes, the PGOU foresees 680 new dwellings, not 863, as the homes in Torreaga will already be completed, allocated, or licensed by the time the PGOU is definitively approved. EH Bildu's proposal is to build approximately 1,300 new homes over the next fifteen years, with 500 of these being public housing.

"The City Council designated Zumaia as a tense residential market area. Current legislation stipulates that 20% of the total housing stock in the municipality must consist of public protection housing within a 20-year period. However, with the approved PGOU, it would be impossible to meet this objective, and consequently, no real solution would be provided to the housing crisis."

A spokesperson for EH Bildu
Furthermore, the party believes that the plan offers an insufficient response to the activation of land for economic activity, urban mobility, equipment planning, and, in general, opportunities to improve the quality of the city. They have indicated that incorporating areas like Basusta would imply returning to the initial approval and conducting a new participation process. Nevertheless, they believe that if there were political will, a new approval and public exhibition could be carried out swiftly, and, if necessary, limited to areas with significant changes. Such a process would take approximately three months.
They have emphasized the urgency of providing real solutions to the housing crisis in the medium and long term, and for this reason, they have called on EH Bildu for political will to move in that direction. Consequently, they consider this PGOU to be lacking in ambition and conservative, failing to provide an adequate response to the housing crisis that Zumaia is experiencing.