A couple with three children, between three months and 14 years old, is desperately seeking to obtain a home in Lanzarote. The mother, resident in the municipality of Arrecife, relates that when her landlady told her a year ago that she had to leave the house, her world fell apart. Since then, she narrates that she began an incessant search to find a new home on the island, which has ended with her mental health and that, for the moment, has not borne fruit.
"I have thought about taking my own life, but I haven't done it for my children," the mother tells La Voz. When she and her partner received the news that they had to leave the house in which they had been living for six years, they decided to stop paying the rent, around 580 euros in the capital of Lanzarote, in order to save some money and pay the entrance fee for a house. "The cheapest ones disappeared on the spot and we cannot afford the others," she explains during an interview with La Voz.
The price of housing for sale in Lanzarote has not stopped breaking records and is now more expensive than ever, according to data from the real estate portal Idealista, from February of this year, with prices above 3,000 euros per square meter.
Meanwhile, she and her partner have already accumulated dozens of boxes with their belongings in a room, while they look for an apartment for rent in which to live with their children, aged three months, 13 and 14 years, before the eviction scheduled for next July takes place. "We need to find something and have the family together," she says through tears. This citizen assures that both she and her partner have permanent contracts and that they can face a lease, but they cannot find any property. "I'm not asking for anything to be given to us, this situation is very difficult, whoever rents it to us will charge 100%, all we want is to continue living together."
Almost 20% of rental properties last less than 24 hours advertised in Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria, according to the same portal. At the same time, rents in the islands have experienced the largest price increases in the country, according to the Barometer of rent of 2024.
"I don't know what we will do if we don't find houses, I will go to a bridge. My fear is ending up on the street and Social Services taking the children away from us," she laments. "We are desperate, we don't care about the area of the island, if it is a house that needs to be renovated, a property that has no electricity, and it has to be put in, we don't care," she continues.
It is not the first family that is in this situation in Lanzarote. A couple with four children, three of them minors, was evicted from the Argana Alta neighborhood at the beginning of April without other housing alternatives.
