The housing crisis that is shaking the countries of Southern Europe is bursting at the seams and making it increasingly difficult for residents to find a decent and affordable place to live. Thousands of people have demonstrated in Spain in the last year demanding that public institutions comply with Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution, which ensures a "decent and adequate home" and obliges the political class to "promote the necessary conditions and establish the rules" for it to be fulfilled.
Although the increase in housing prices is a problem throughout the country, in the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands, the situation is more pressing than in the rest of the country. This dramatic situation is aggravated in coastal areas, on the islands, and in tourist areas. In one year, housing prices increased by 11.5% in both archipelagos and far exceeded the highs of the real estate bubble of 2008 (data from the Tinsa appraiser). In addition, the price of rent in the Canary Islands has increased by 17.4% in the last year, according to the Observatory of the Rental of the Seguro Rental Foundation and the Rey Juan Carlos University, and is among the six most expensive in the country.
In recent years, a term that was born in the late 60s in Anglo-Saxon literature, has become popular and is used to name the displacement of the local population from their neighborhoods: gentrification.
Gentrification or how locals are expelled from their neighborhoods
In its origins, the term gentrification "came to express the process of social substitution that occurs in a neighborhood, when groups or neighbors with a lower income level are replaced by others who come from outside with a higher income", explains the professor of Human Geography at the University of Las Palmas, Juan M. Parreño, who has focused his 30 years as a researcher on the study of the city and tourist space, in particular, on social inequalities, residential insecurity, and international migrations. The initial concept of gentrification focused on neighborhoods that "had undergone a process of degradation, of previous impoverishment" but that, despite that, "had certain potentialities" and lower prices and that is why "more affluent classes bought properties in the area".
Currently, the concept has been extended and "is used in a much broader context" to talk about any type of social displacement that is "linked to the increase in housing prices." Parreño explains that, in the Canary Islands, "a good part of gentrification is associated with touristification processes."
"Gentrification is the consequence, but the causes are diverse," points out Agustín Cocola, doctor in Human Geography from the University of Cardiff, who is also a doctor in Art History from the University of Barcelona. Thus, he points out that there are two main reasons that promote the expulsion of locals from their neighborhoods: the role of tourism in the proliferation of vacation rentals and, the great forgotten, the use of housing as "an investment asset".
Although the controversy surrounding tourist housing has been widely discussed, real estate speculation as a cause of rising housing prices and the loss of neighborhood identity has been left aside in the debate. Cocola, also a researcher at the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon (IGOT), emphasizes that "there are many people who buy second homes, not to use them, but simply to deposit their savings in them", where being a tourist destination plays an important role. "People usually buy in tourist destinations because they can spend their vacations and, at the same time, they are places where housing prices continue to rise and that gives profitability."
The Canary Islands is one of the autonomous communities where more homes are acquired by non-resident foreigners. Throughout 2024, about three out of ten properties that were sold on the islands were bought by foreigners, according to the Association of Property Registrars. Locals, with salaries 31.9% below the European average (2023 data) and among the three lowest in the country, compete in the market with other European citizens to acquire a home. "When there is a lot of foreign investment, housing prices in that area increase and people who cannot afford it have to leave," Cocola explains. Some regional parties have proposed restricting the purchase of homes to non-residents, a very controversial measure for being part of a member state of the European Union.
Cocola indicates that the current situation means that people who are buying homes are "multi-property owners" and use that first home as support to buy the second or third. Meanwhile, those who access the housing market for the first time must have "a large family support" or are destined to go "to rent to impoverish themselves", since "part of their salary will go to those multi-property owners". This generates a latent inequality between Canarian residents and migrants. "People who migrated, whose family did not buy, the children of first-generation migrants who failed to buy, who have had more difficulty. This further increases inequality," explains the researcher from the Portuguese university.
The emotional footprint of not having a home
The emotional impact of the housing crisis is also undeniable. "People live on the edge, they have a job, but they are still poor because of the rent. They live with constant stress and precariousness that affects their life and their life trajectory, the education of their children," says Agustín Cocola. For example, "they cannot separate even if they live in toxic relationships due to the lack of housing. It is a very serious issue," he adds. In addition, it means "the loss of the place, of the neighbors, especially in older people who are isolated and stay alone at home because they no longer know anyone in the neighborhood or do not have stores where to buy."
The housing crisis also drives the displacement of residents to the periphery, in search of more affordable prices. "In Lisbon, where I live, the center is for foreign investors and tourists. People live on the outskirts and that implies that they are places with few infrastructures, poorly connected, without public transport and with few services." This spatial dispersion implies a cost of time and money for residents, but also "implies the loss of quality of life, not only impoverishment."
Is it possible to reverse the situation?
The researcher from the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning of the University of Lisbon warns of the risk of reaching a point where locals cannot live in their territories and adds that there are different measures that have been applied around the world, with more or less success, to tackle this situation. The expert explains that "the government is saying that the crisis is due to a lack of housing that we have to build more and consume the territory, but that, honestly, is not true", so he argues that "there is enough housing, what happens is that there is a problem in the use of housing", between tourist homes, empty homes and second homes. To avoid this speculation, he proposes as an "immediate solution" to use the existing housing stock and "stop being speculative", that is, "recover the social function of housing."
For example, in New Zealand, Canada or Amsterdam "they are prohibiting the formation of multi-ownership, only the purchase of housing as a main residence is allowed and you cannot buy housing that is not for those uses." However, he warns that these regulations will involve "a power game" between the political class and "the pressure from the real estate sector and investors."
At the same time, he points out that the Government of the Canary Islands has contributed to the "speculative phenomenon" by not proposing a tourist moratorium on vacation rentals when it announced the draft law on tourist use of homes. "Normally, when the law is discussed, a moratorium is made to stop registrations until the law is approved," he informs. In this case, the population has continued to register so that "in the future when the registry is closed, the homes that are inside have an added value and can sell the license in the market, make the value of the house increase." Only in Lanzarote, since June 2023 the registered vacation homes have grown by 84.85% to reach 9,600.
