student housing crisis la laguna tenerife

Student housing crisis in La Laguna: rents soar and scams rise

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

The student housing crisis in La Laguna

La Laguna (Tenerife) is, by excellence, the university city of the Canary Islands. However, the difficulties students face when trying to find a flat are shaking this title. Soaring rental prices, a lack of available properties, scams, and abusive contract clauses are among the problems university students are reporting.

“Every year, at the end of the academic term, it is very complicated and disheartening to have to search or help other classmates find affordable flats that don’t pose an economic problem for families and that are habitable,” stresses Acorán Jesús Pérez Guerra, a Biology student. “Prices go up more every year, with the certainty that they will eventually manage to rent them out, as there are no other options and you can’t commute from one island to another daily,” adds Pérez, who was born in Gran Canaria.

Soaring costs and island barriers

Renting a room in La Laguna costs students and their families between 300 and 500 euros, despite the Canary Islands being one of the most impoverished autonomous communities in the country, with 31.2% of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion. Added to the rising cost of rents is another difficulty: the insular nature of the territory. Students who do not live on the capital islands must relocate to attend university, adding the cost of housing to the expense of flights or ferry tickets to visit their families.

Even those born in Tenerife and Gran Canaria are forced to leave their island to pursue their chosen degree or to find a flat closer to the faculties, thereby avoiding the daily traffic chaos on the roads. Tinguaro was born in La Gomera and studies Anthropology at the ULL (University of La Laguna). “Over all these years I have been through five flats. My family is poor, so I always worried about finding a flat as cheaply as possible. I left two of them because the conditions were too abusive in my opinion,” he recounts.

A former student who prefers not to give her name lives in northern Tenerife and moved to La Laguna to study. “I paid 400 euros for a flat in the very centre with three bedrooms. Sharing, it was 130 euros per person,” she recalls. Over the years, she watched the rent rise and rise, which led her to work while studying to afford it.

Scams and exploitation of vulnerable students

The fear of having nowhere to live during the academic year leads young people to fall victim to scams and pay exorbitant prices for a room. Alejandra Ramírez is from Gran Canaria but studies Psychology at the ULL because the degree is not offered at the public university on her island. This academic year, she will share a flat with ten people in a multi-storey house near her faculty. She will pay 350 euros for her room, bills included, but finding it involved overcoming several obstacles, including a scam.

“I was scammed out of 95 euros. My friend and I had to make a reservation to view a flat, and when we got there, the flat didn’t exist,” she says. “In my personal case and that of my family, looking for a rental flat in La Laguna has been desperate as well as frustrating. You reach a point where you lose hope because you find yourself with nothing and you don’t know if things will work out,” she stresses.

In the Canary Islands, such fraudulent practices have increased across all types of rentals. The Tenerife Tenants’ Union explains how scams have risen by between 10% and 12%, particularly in Tenerife and Gran Canaria, severely affecting students: “They are especially vulnerable because they usually have little time to find accommodation, little renting experience, and limited budgets. The housing shortage also forces them to accept offers quickly, even without being able to check them properly. This shows how the lack of public housing and the deregulated market leave young people exposed to all kinds of abuse.”

A structural problem affecting all society

The speculative dynamics of the housing market are particularly striking among young students due to their vulnerability and inexperience. However, housing movements across the islands emphasise that this is merely the tip of the iceberg of a structural problem affecting all sectors of the population and the Canarian working class. “In today’s reality, students are not the only people competing (because yes, it has become a competition) for these vacancies: many families, sometimes with dual incomes from legal guardians who have been priced out of the residential market, end up in a situation that forces them to consider living crammed together in these conditions, which leads to a bidding war to get a roof over one’s head,” detail the collective Derecho al Techo (Right to a Roof) from Gran Canaria.

According to the latest data published by the Rental Observatory, the Canary Islands remain one of the most expensive communities for renting in the whole of Spain, with an average price of 1,154 euros. Furthermore, historical data from platforms such as Idealista shows that the price of flats in university cities like San Cristóbal de La Laguna or Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has skyrocketed over the last decade: by around 120% and 87%, respectively. This rise contrasts starkly with a community that has some of the lowest salaries in the country.

Calls for regulation and public housing

Both the Tenerife Tenants’ Union and Derecho al Techo highlight the lack of policies designed to reverse this situation. They point out that the regional government does not even apply the national Housing Law—passed in the Spanish Congress in 2023—to limit ordinary rental prices, especially in stressed areas such as Las Palmas or La Laguna. In this context, capping the price of rooms, which communities like Catalonia are incorporating into national legislation, remains even further out of reach.

Rentals for primary residences and those for rooms are subject to different legal frameworks, mainly regulated by the Urban Leases Act (LAU) and the Civil Code, depending on the type of contract and its purpose. In this regard, housing groups explain that the proliferation of room or seasonal rentals can allow landlords to circumvent safeguards designed for primary residences, such as those relating to the duration or updating of rents. This arrangement can also be more profitable for owners than renting out an entire property.

This was the case Tinguaro encountered during his early years studying at the ULL. He lived with eight other people in a house divided into two floors, where the landlord set the room at 310 euros. In total, that’s 2,480 euros of profit for a property which, according to the price index of the Ministry of Housing—and in line with cadastral information—should not exceed 1,000 euros. A price that sits up to 190% above the reference value. “And this same landlord has two other properties near the Guajara campus where he does the same thing,” adds the student from La Gomera.

Education becoming a class privilege

The current rise in housing market prices, and the lack of regulation in this regard, seems to be determining who can realistically maintain their studies. Housing movements remind us that added to the cost of rent are transport, food, and other expenses—such as the infamous second enrolment fees—making studying increasingly dependent on a family’s economic capacity: “It ends up becoming a class privilege.”

Derecho al Techo asserts that the current landscape results in the highest dropout rate in face-to-face universities in Spain, with 21% in the Canary Islands compared to a national average of 13%, as already reflected in a 2022 report by the Ministry of Universities. Likewise, the Tenerife Tenants’ Union adds that in La Laguna, around 1,400 applications have been registered for 550 university accommodation places: “This represents a territorial and class inequality, and the right to study should not depend on being born into a family with resources. If a person from La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro, or Fuerteventura cannot afford a room in Tenerife or Gran Canaria, their access to certain degrees is limited.”

Insufficient public accommodation and new projects

The public accommodation centres offered by the ULL have also become too small. The university has three halls of residence and one residence hall, totalling 541 rooms (single, double, and adapted). According to data published by the institution, 17,452 people have so far enrolled for the upcoming academic year. There is also a private residence in the university city, the Nazaret University Residence, which is religious in nature and for women only.

In January of this year, the rector of the ULL, Francisco García, and the mayor of La Laguna, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, presented an initiative to build 50 student places on municipal land in the Guajara area. According to Lidia Perera, general manager of the ULL, the construction uses an industrialised galvanised steel system because it is faster than traditional methods. However, these places will not be available this academic year, as the institution has only just received the project proposal. “This document also has an economic assessment, and this way we can connect with the regional government administration and other administrations to set a roadmap for the project in terms of timeline and financial plan,” explains Perera. “Practically all administrations are in agreement,” she assures.

The Cabildo (island council) of La Palma has also initiated procedures to create its own residence in Tenerife for students from La Palma, responding to the accommodation needs of young people from the island who move away “to continue their university studies and other disciplines.” The island corporation relies on the Cabildos Law, which allows them to carry out infrastructure outside their territorial scope to provide direct services to their population.

Housing activism: a model that puts profit before people

Housing activism is clear: “The problem is not just the lack of homes, but a model that prioritises private profit and tourist accommodation over the right to live and study with dignity. The solution lies in increasing public housing and university residences, regulating rents in stressed areas, and ensuring that no young person has to give up studying because they cannot afford a room. Public education is only truly egalitarian if the right to housing is also guaranteed.”

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