A mother, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, has been looking for a place to live with her son, a child under ten years old, in Lanzarote for months. Her story is a reflection of the housing crisis that is hitting Lanzarote, with rental prices higher than ever and housing for sale above 3,000 euros per square meter.
The difficulties in finding a house on the island led her to live for 17 days in a car parked on the street, with the child and her two dogs. She managed to get out of this situation by constantly posting ads on social media and alerted by the fear that social services would take her son away. It is not the first time that the housing crisis has pushed Lanzarote residents to move their homes to a motorhome or a car; in tourist municipalities, neighborhoods of hospitality workers, but also healthcare workers, who live on four wheels pushed by necessity, have grown.
After an arduous search, this mother found a room for rent for 400 euros per month in a house in the north of the island. However, the problems of living with a stranger in this property are pushing her again to look for another space in which to live with her son and in which to feel safe. "I don't want to be in this house, I'm afraid for my son," she confesses in an interview with La Voz, the child has attention deficit and the situation is also generating "trauma", she explains.
This woman is looking for a motorhome to stay in with her child and her two dogs, with the aim of unifying expenses, between the 400 euros she invests in the room and the 700 she pays per month to rent a vehicle. During this time, she has tried to find a place where she can work, in her work as a craftswoman, and at the same time live with her son. In addition, the good relationship with her ex-partner, the father of her son, adds another 300 euros that they invest in another room in the same house.
With the requirements to rent a house becoming increasingly stringent, this citizen denounces that "a family can no longer live in Lanzarote" because she runs into problems finding a house in which to live with her son, as she says that she encounters owners who do not want to rent to minors or who do not want her two dogs to enter the house. In recent months, this citizen has asked for help on social media to find shelter for these animals, with the aim of preventing them from ending up in a kennel.
