By Toni Ferrera.| Maira is Venezuelan, she is 40 years old and since 2020 she has lived in Granadilla de Abona. She does it as a squatter in an apartment with no windows and a single door, the one she faces outside, which floods every time it rains and where the floor is made of stone. Hardly sunlight enters. The ceiling is full of moisture. The walls that separate her rooms were built by her and other relatives of hers. The place, in short, was abandoned before someone arrived. Now, the bank has bought the property and has given Maira two years to find another home. And in her search to find a new home, all are disappointments.
“They don’t accept children, they don’t accept pets… Everything is too expensive. And they force you to have a minimum of two payslips, in addition to paying a three-month advance as well. The cheapest I have found are apartments for 600 euros and with one or two rooms. I am a kitchen assistant and I earn 1,200 euros. I can’t allocate half my salary just to rent”, laments Maira.
The prices in Granadilla They are tall, but they are much taller now than before. Between 2015 and 2020, the value of the square meter of rental housing in this town increased by 39.6%, according to the Rental Price Index published each year by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda. No other town in Spain has experienced such a rise.
Pending the famous Housing Law, announced more than a year ago, but which has not yet been approved in the Cortes Generales, there is no way to regulate a market that continues to expel the local population and force many people to survive. on the margins of severe poverty. The average income in Granadilla is 14,300 euros per year, one of the lowest in the Islands. Maira’s case is one of an endless list.
