That the tourist industry has improved the wealth and development figures of the Canary Islands, and especially of tourist areas like the Southis unquestionable, in the same way that it also generates an unequal distribution of wealth and generates situations of high vulnerability, such as displacing a majority of citizens from access to housing, a right recognized in the Constitution itself.
Farther from the national average
We must not forget that tourism is, for example, responsible for holiday rentals and the increase in rental prices, which has led to a trigger for situations of social vulnerability in the south of Tenerife. And that a whole “tourismophobic” movement has emerged related to the problems that the sector also generates.
Vans, cars, caravans, substandard housing… And the street is serving as a mattress for hundreds of people who have no alternatives with insufficient salaries to cope with the spread of the vacation rental phenomenon, as he explained to NOTICE DIARY Alejandra Hernández, the coordinator of “Base 25”, Caritas program with financing from the Cabildo de Tenerife.
There was a time when the growth in the number of tourists served as a direct spur to the increase in wealth and the convergence of the Canary Islands with respect to the Spanish average. But that’s no longer true. If in the year 2000, the per capita income of the Islands was 98% of the Spanish, twenty years later, this had moved away to 72%. The canaries are poorer than the average of the rest of the country’s citizens, a reality. And yet, the GDP of the Canary Islands has grown a lot, spurred on by a growing number of tourists, among other factors. But it is not enough to improve living conditions.
In 1995, the wealth generated by the Canary Islands was equivalent to 17,426 million euros. In 2021, it multiplied so much that it reached 42,656 million euros. And the inhabitants of the Islands? Between 1995 and 2008 they experienced a notable improvement in a period in which GDP per capita went from 11,200 euros to 21,050. However, from that point on, wealth has stopped growing and has been maintained. In 2021 it did not reach 19,000 euros.
We are not richer, but, except for the period of the pandemic, the number of visitors has not stopped growing in that period, reaching 14,620,000 tourists in 2022 compared to 10,430,000 in 2010.
Despite all this, the Arope Report indicates that in 2021 38% of the Canaries were at risk of poverty. In 2020 it was 30%. Leading the ranking of Spain.
All this wealth attracts tens of thousands of people to the South of the Island
Jonathan Regalado is a social worker, PhD in Psychology and CEO of the Spanish Institute of Clinical Social Work, with extensive experience in municipalities such as Arona, which stands out clearly in the South Region with the highest rates, not only of population, but of homeless people.
There is an idea that persists, both in this case and in the rest of the specialists consulted: the connection that exists between vulnerability and exclusion and the lack of a social support network of family or close people that prevent it from passing from one to the other.
There is also a coincidence in highlighting a panorama of low wages and increasingly higher rents that make the figures continue to increase.
“There is a clear correlation, not only in the Canary Islands, but throughout Spain, between poverty and tourist areas, which attract a large number of people who are expelled by the sector, either due to age, exclusion due to some disability or issues such as homophobia or transphobia,” explains Jonathan Regalado, for whom the tourism market moves in clear patterns of age, between 30 and 45 years, good presence, which makes it difficult to get out of the situation of exclusion, and preferably by cannon. “heteronormative” ones.
“Support networks are also essential. The weaker they are, the greater the risk there is and that is why a large part of the people in vulnerable or street situations have deteriorated social and family relationships or that they are far away”, he adds.
Soaring rentals
The south, therefore, offers as many opportunities as exclusion, especially in a situation in which, to low wages, we must add rents that have skyrocketed due to the expansion of the vacation rental phenomenon.
José Antonio Díez Dávila, coordinator of the Mobile Street Service Units (UMAC) of Cáritas Diocesana de Tenerife explains the project that this organization has carried out with funding from the Cabildo to locate the homeless in Tenerife.
“We are locating people on the street, substandard housing, settlements or vehicles” with his team made up of a dozen people. “Almost all our forces are leaving us in Arona, Granadilla and Adeje.” Only in the most populous municipality in the South, to give the most important example, have they located 441 people without housing or without decent housing. In Adeje there have been 162 and in Granadilla de Abona, 128.
“We find ourselves in many different situations, but the support network is key. There are many community members, for example, who do not have it, it is far away or it is in poor condition. However, it is not necessary to think that they are people without work, for example. Up to 14% of those we have detected have one, in the same way that 20% have some kind of disability. Then there are those who live with little help that does not allow them to normalize their situation”, explains Díez Ávila.
In other words, the vulnerability profile is generalized and has gone from specific situations to people and families with average incomes, who go, for example, to the programs available, in addition to Cáritas, organizations such as the Red Cross.
Precisely, the latter also has two types of programs to address vulnerability: one for material support for those who have housing but see how their possibilities are diminishing with the rise in prices, and another for street care, which in the municipality of Arona is, on the one hand, the project called Mobile Emergency Unit (UME) and, on the other, a day center open in El Fraile so that it can be used by the homeless. The first is financed by the Social Services area of the City Council, while the second is done by the IASS, a body dependent on the Cabildo de Tenerife.
The provincial coordinator of the Spanish Red Cross, Rubén González, explains that, without a doubt, “the number of people both in vulnerability and in a situation of exclusion has increased.”
impoverished areas
The south, therefore, offers as many opportunities as exclusion, especially in a situation in which, to low wages, we must add rents that have skyrocketed due to the expansion of the vacation rental phenomenon.
José Antonio Díez Dávila, coordinator of the Mobile Street Service Units (UMAC) of Cáritas Diocesana de Tenerife explains the project that this organization has carried out with funding from the Cabildo to locate the homeless in Tenerife.
Díez Dávila explains that “Arona is one of the most impoverished municipalities, but this is mainly due to the fact that it is an area where more affordable rents have traditionally been offered in places like Guargacho, for example. What we see there is social vulnerability, not exclusion. In other words, people who can’t make ends meet and to whom we help to pay rent or supplies, such as energy. But we accompany these measures with other training measures, such as workshops on energy efficiency to learn how to lower the electricity bill”.
After these situations, there are those of social exclusion, which have been settling around two fundamental areas that are “the area of El Fraile-Las Galletas and Los Cristianos”. “In these cases, what we are doing with the UME is to approach the places where we know that the homeless are concentrated to provide them with food, heat and health care, as well as to find out their situation and liaise with the municipal social services”.
Day center in El Fraile
Despite these situations of exclusion, historically there have been prevention and work programs in the medium and long term, except for some initiatives, such as the start-up by the municipality of Arona to provide housing for homeless people, called Housing First.
Some municipalities, such as Arona, Adeje or Granadilla de Abona have created street care services such as the aforementioned UME of the former. Another resource has been added to this resource, a day center that has been located in the town of El Fraile and where homeless people can go to perform some basic functions, such as showering or washing clothes.
“Recovering someone from the street -explains Rubén González- is a long process and is not the same as social vulnerability. It is about, little by little, recovering people who have suffered everything and who, together with their situation, may or may not add mental health or addiction problems, for example, for which prolonged care is required.
Although centers like this one are very useful, “they are more effective in places like the metropolitan area, where the population lives more concentrated and public transport connections are much better. The south of the Island, on the other hand, is a very dispersed space, with remote nuclei and settlements and with poor connectivity, which makes the conditions of homeless people and their care very difficult.” Hence, one of the services provided by the Red Cross is to transfer users to the day center for free.
The social worker and doctor in Psychology Jonathan Regalado, for his part, notes that “mental illnesses or addictions are not the origin of homelessness, but the result of the deterioration that spending many years on the street entails.”
The housing problem
Alejandra Hernández, when dealing with the problem of social exclusion, warns that “the problem of finding affordable rental housing has become colossal because of vacation rentals.” The coordinator of the “Base 25” program, of Cáritas Diocesana de Tenerife and financed by the Cabildo, “things are getting very ugly for those who have habitability problems and they are going to get worse. It terrifies me to think that we are going to normalize the idea of a vehicle, car or van, as a viable alternative to lack of housing ”, she warns.
This program tries to prevent people from losing the homes they live in, either due to non-payment of rent, abusive conditions, price increases above what the state intervention marks… However, the extension of vacation rentals to traditionally residential areas does obvious social damage.
