The CEOE has warned of the "structural" shortage of housing in the Canary Islands, with a deficit of more than 37,600 units, which has become a real obstacle to economic growth, job creation, and social cohesion in the archipelago.
These are the conclusions of the Canary Islands Economy Monitor – Diagnosis of the Housing Market in the Canary Islands, which has been made public by the employers' association of Tenerife, in which it assures that housing has ceased to be an exclusively social problem to become a critical factor of competitiveness.
The tension in the residential market is affecting the functioning of the labor market and conditioning the ability of the Canary Islands economy to attract and retain workers, CEOE continues.
Thus, according to the employers' association's data, each year the potential demand for housing in the Canary Islands grows by around 10,000 new households, while annual production does not exceed 2,500 homes.
This profound imbalance between supply and demand, which has been ongoing for years, explains about 40% of the recent increase in housing prices in the Islands and will continue to intensify if decisive action is not taken on residential supply.
The structural housing deficit is aggravated by the insufficient construction of social housing (VPO) in recent years, clearly unable to absorb the demand from lower-income households. This lack of affordable supply displaces this group towards the free market and rentals, intensifying pressure on both segments and contributing directly to the general increase in prices.
CEOE emphasizes that this is not a cyclical phenomenon or a one-off increase in demand, but the result of a prolonged blockage of residential production, caused by the lack of developable land, excessive administrative complexity, legal uncertainty, and low profitability for the development sector, which limit investment and the launch of new housing projects.
The economic impact of this situation is already evident, and the shortage of affordable housing limits labor mobility, increases the real cost of employment, and reduces companies' ability to fill jobs, especially in strategic activities for the Canary Islands.
Added to this reality is the fact that the Archipelago has average wages lower than the national average, given the composition of its productive fabric, while the effort to access housing exceeds recommended risk thresholds, resulting in growing residential vulnerability that affects consumption, savings, and social stability, the employers' association continues.
CEOE Tenerife insists that housing must be placed as a priority on the public agenda and calls for facilitating land, streamlining licenses, strengthening legal certainty, and activating public and private investment as essential measures to increase supply and prevent the housing crisis from continuing to hinder the growth of the Canary Islands.
"Without housing, employment, competitiveness, and social cohesion suffer. Resolving this problem is an indispensable condition for the economic future of the Archipelago," concludes the employers' association of Tenerife.
