A Constitutional Right, But Not a Fundamental One
“All Spaniards have the right to enjoy decent and adequate housing.” So states Article 47 of the Spanish Constitution. However, in recent years, enjoying this constitutional guarantee has become extremely difficult for a large part of the population in the Canary Islands. The continuous escalation of prices, rising faster than family purchasing power, the ever-dwindling supply, speculation that has turned a basic necessity into an investment asset, and the lack of new developments—both public and private—have turned what should be guaranteed by the state’s fundamental law into a pipe dream. A “fake right,” as it was labelled following the presentation of the latest report by Cáritas and the Foessa Foundation.
Housing as a Determinant of Social Fate
The report determines that whether one has a home or not increasingly conditions the social situation of Canary Islanders and is confirmed as one of the greatest risk factors for falling into vulnerability. Having a roof over one’s head has become a determining factor affecting the lives of thousands in the archipelago, marking an abysmal difference in the economic reality of families. Why? Because dedicating a larger percentage of household income to rent or mortgage payments leaves less margin for spending on other essential aspects like filling the pantry, paying utility bills, clothing, or school expenses.
However, it must be noted that housing is a right, yes, but access to one has never been fully guaranteed by public authorities. It is enshrined in the Constitution but not as a fundamental right. What does this mean? “Indeed, it is within our legal framework and is included in the Constitution, but it is not part of those more strongly protected rights, such as the right to strike or freedom of expression,” explains Estefanía Torres, professor of Civil Law at the University of La Laguna (ULL). Consequently, not being a fundamental right, a citizen cannot go to court to demand access to housing, despite public authorities having a responsibility according to the Constitution.
From Accessible Asset to Unattainable Product
But what has led to it becoming increasingly difficult to access this right, if it was ever closer for citizens? As with almost everything, there are multiple factors. However, it can be affirmed that access to housing was considerably easier years ago. There are several reasons for this. The property market that existed, for example, in 1978 when the Constitution was approved, was completely different, and demand was too. Spain was coming off a construction boom in the 1960s and 70s, where new neighbourhoods with many houses were built. The average household size was larger, meaning more people lived in each home, and, above all, accessing them was more affordable relative to the average salary.
In 1978, a home in Spain cost approximately four or five times the annual gross salary, and renting it meant allocating 20% of one’s wages. Today, becoming a homeowner in the Archipelago costs almost twelve annual gross salaries. In other words, a worker would have to save their entire salary for twelve years to buy a house outright—a completely utopian situation. Currently, renting a flat is no easier either. Canary Islanders must allocate almost 70% of their salary to pay an average rent.
“What has changed and become the main difficulty is that housing is now a free-market commodity, considered just another product, even for investment,” states Torres. This has fuelled speculation and the relentless increase in prices. In recent years, this has been coupled with a labour market where supply has continued to shrink, almost at the same time as demand grew significantly.
A Shrinking Market Meets Growing Demand
As the population in the Canary Islands has increased and household models have changed, more people are looking for a home in a market that seems to have less and less to offer them. The reasons, again, are varied. Supply is shrinking due to the lack of new private construction since the property bubble burst, but also because for years public authorities have ignored their obligation to build affordable public housing. And it does not seem that it will be easy to reverse this situation now.
The lack of finalist land—that which has completed administrative procedures and is ready to start building—is compounded by the slow processing of licences, which can gather dust in the drawers of many town halls, and the shortage of companies and personnel in the construction sector. Now, another problem is added: building houses is no longer profitable. Or, at least, not as profitable as it is supposed to be. This has been warned by the sector’s employer associations in the Canaries. The increase in material costs and excessive bureaucracy cause investments to go to other sectors.
The Need for Budgets, Not Just Promises
But what would need to be done to try to change the situation? “It is necessary for the will and constant announcements that we are going to build houses to translate into budgets,” indicates María Salud Gil, president of the Association of Builders of the province of Las Palmas. To build 12,000 homes a year, “450 million euros are needed, and the private sector is willing to contribute another 2,000.” This could cover the difference between production costs and the prices the population can pay.
Personal Stories of an Impossible Search
But the truth is that in the meantime, the difficulty in finding housing affects a broad spectrum of people. Searching for a house, to buy but especially to rent, has become a kind of impossible mission. Families, pet owners, couples, or single people. The difficulties in accessing a home affect almost everyone equally. It is no longer enough to have a permanent job and a high income. The scant supply and high prices shatter the expectations of many. “They make it very difficult for you,” admits Carolina Mijares, a woman who has been looking for a home for herself and her twelve-year-old daughter for two years. She now lives in a room in a shared flat, and her daughter stays with her father. She pays 500 euros for the room, an amount that not so many years ago would have paid for an entire flat.
“Now they ask for pay slips that aren’t earned here, they demand you have a job where you’ve been fixed for a year, guarantors, and an impossible amount of money, and the worst part is that no one is doing anything to resolve this,” she laments. But even if she met all these requirements, she has sometimes been told “that they don’t rent to families with children.”
However, families are not the only group now having extreme difficulty securing housing. Often, a single person with only one salary to pay the rent is also at a clear disadvantage, as the average rent in the Canary Islands now amounts to 70% of the salaries earned in the Archipelago. And the difficulty becomes an impossible mission if, like Johnny Mendoza, the prospective tenant has a pet.
“I have stable income to meet my payments and even a letter of recommendation from my current landlady, yet finding affordable rent is becoming quite complicated,” he explains. He has been searching since last summer and has found nothing, and he assures that one of the main handicaps is that many do not admit pets. “Having a dog and living in rented accommodation nowadays seems almost incompatible. Sometimes it feels like it’s easier to get a mortgage without a payslip than to rent a flat if you have pets,” he comments. There are also “fake listings, of which there are many, rentals that are only seasonal, and also conditions and prices that are practically unaffordable,” he states. So “between guarantees, months in advance, and various requirements, it sometimes feels like you’re being selected for astronaut training rather than as a tenant.”
The Greatest Bottleneck to Social Integration
Faced with this outlook, housing has become the most widespread factor of social exclusion in the Canary Islands: one in three people in the Islands shows some feature of residential exclusion. In this way, it has become “the great bottleneck for social integration in the Canary Islands,” stated the head of the technical committee of the report prepared by the Foessa Foundation. “Until it becomes a real pillar of the welfare state with stable policies that prioritise the right to housing over its market value, technical improvement will continue not translating into social integration.”
The impact is already structural, such that the excessive effort on housing and utilities pushes more than 122,000 households below the severe poverty line, situations of residential precariousness become chronic, and 218,000 people live in insecure housing with 342,000 in inadequate housing.
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