Reverse the declaration of ruin and take advantage of the urban amnesty established in the decree of administrative simplification. This is the goal of the 103 owners of the Don Pepe apartments, who last night have again received a promise from the City Council of Sant Josep and do not lose hope. Mayor Vicent Roig (PP)met Friday night with the evicted residents of block A of the Don Pepe apartments, where he announced his commitment to review the declaration of ruin of the building, which has been closed since December 2021. Block A is fully evicted. “On June 4, 2020, the first staircase was vacated, which is the only one that is propped up. I lived in that staircase,” Silvia, one of those affected, tells La Voz de Ibiza. While in December staircase 2 followed the same path “and later the rest of the stairs were evicted”. In an almost identical situation are the neighbors of block B, which still remains habitable although with the fear that they may also be evicted. “We all equally have the same uncertainty, the same pressure and the same hodgepodge of emotions that some manage better than others because we all have a sword of Damocles over our head and we have all been dealing with this problem for 4 years. Because not being evicted does not mean that you do not suffer the problem of your neighbors more than anything else because you think that tomorrow it will happen to you,” adds the woman.
“No ruin.”
“The idea that was presented on July 4 is to try to reverse the process of ruin and then, through the decree of urban simplification, when it is possible, because it is not yet in force, to look at the way to legalize the apartments to be able to rehabilitate them“, Silvia points out. According to her, this is the “most viable and best solution for everyone. With the housing situation that exists in Ibiza, to throw away 100 houses, cry out to heaven”. In addition, she insisted that “there is no ruin. When the ruin was declared, we presented a report written by a doctor in Architecture, who is also a professor at the University of Valencia, specializing in structures.
Tastings were made, studies were made and there is no risk of ruin, no ruin, no imminent ruin, no ruin of anything. So we presented this super report”. For this reason, he maintains that “there is a basis for maintaining these dwellings”.“I am hopeful that now, with this decree of urban simplification, with this commitment that the City Council had at the meeting of the Commission on July 4, and reiterated yesterday to the neighbors to try or start to reverse the process of ruin,” he said. And the promise to enter a “social rental regime and then they offered us to be able to buy some subsidized housing, would not it be better for people who need it too?”. “And we, the residents of the Don Pepe apartments, should stay in our homes and be allowed to rehabilitate, which is a right that everyone should have, to modernize it without extending the meters, but to conserve what you have,” he said.
Little information
The tension and desperation of the neighbors, which led two women to break the seal last night , is due to the fact that “we have information in dribs and drabs. And the information we have is that ‘we are studying, we are looking, we are working'”.“Both the lawyer and I have had several meetings, both with the Consellería de Presidencia and with the Conseller de Urbanismo. In those we have reiterated the way, we have spoken with the mayor of Sant Josep, we have spoken with the Consell. That is, we are an active part of this work that is trying to spin and unite the different administrations, to meet the commitments they made on July 4, which is each, within its powers, to do everything necessary, and by that I mean to study and take the necessary actions to reach this solution, “he said. However, he claimed that “the information is not flowing and it seems that at some point someone is stuck. We will see if this action of these neighbors, spontaneous and driven by desperation, because not everyone manages their emotions in the same way, serves to make the public opinion and especially the administrations know the state of tension in which all the neighbors are”.
Urgent meeting
Mayor Roig has committed to convene a meeting of the commission on Monday.