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Fecam warns housing is driving child poverty in the Canary Islands
The president of the Canary Islands Federation of Municipalities (Fecam), María Concepción Brito, has told a parliamentary committee examining child poverty that housing is the main factor behind vulnerability and the entrenchment of poverty across the islands. She called for price limits on what she described as unaffordable rents, which reach 600 euros per room in towns that are not even island capitals.
It is worth recalling that the Canary Islands Government has not approved any measure to cap prices in the archipelago, nor has it applied the national Housing Law, which does open up that possibility in so-called stressed areas. In fact, the regional government has not yet designated a single stressed area in the islands.
“The construction of public housing is too slow, and in the meantime the Canary Islands Government needs to adopt measures such as declaring stressed areas to limit prices and encourage renovation,” Brito said.
Holiday rentals and foreign buyers under the spotlight
On the regulation of holiday rentals, she criticised the fact that inspections fall to town halls without any funding being provided to carry them out. She also raised the idea of limiting property purchases by foreigners, while acknowledging the complications involved in terms of legal powers and the European framework.
Brito spoke of the frustration felt by municipalities with the Canary Islands Government, which she said has not provided funding for the catalogue of social services. She explained that she had proposed reforming it, but that the reform has not been carried out either, and that the Concerted Plan with town halls has not been updated since 2002.
Calls for full nursery coverage and fairer funding
The Fecam president also demanded full coverage of the 0 to 3 education cycle across every island, pointing out that town halls are forced to take on responsibilities that are not their own in order to keep nursery schools running. She criticised the Education Department for talking only about infrastructure and rejected the idea that climate control problems are down to municipal maintenance, arguing that “you cannot maintain what does not exist”.
The municipal representative also complained that state funding to fight poverty, worth between 7 and 9 million euros for town halls, arrives at the end of the year and barely covers the structural and staffing costs they have already incurred over the previous twelve months, meaning it cannot be used to launch new initiatives.
Mental health and a shortage of frontline resources
María Concepción Brito warned that financial and housing stress is linked to a rise in diagnosed mental health problems among under-18s, and demanded that the Canary Islands Health Service place psychologists in district health centres, since the support resources being provided by town halls are insufficient.
“There is a growing problem with mental health and addictions among young people that requires street outreach teams, and homelessness falls on island-level resources because of a lack of municipal funding,” Brito said.
Brito argued that the diagnoses have already been made and warned that two salaries in a household are no longer enough to cover all the essential costs of a family. Town halls, particularly those with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, lack the resources to maintain multidisciplinary teams and have to make do with social workers who have no support from psychologists or educators, while Concerted Plan funding is insufficient to expand staffing, she insisted.
She also proposed tackling the emotional burden on social action professionals, who face great strain and take sick leave due to emotional stress caused by the harshness of the cases they deal with, by creating a specialised psychological support service under the auspices of the Health Department.
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