Trying to understand the state of social housing in the Canary Islands is a bit like trying to track down an honest property listing online… you assume someone, somewhere, must have the full picture.
Turns out they don’t.
According to information obtained through a transparency request, the Canary Islands Housing Institute (ICAVI) has admitted that it doesn’t actually have a complete list of all subsidised housing developments across the islands. They don’t have a clear register showing their location, the date they were approved, their file numbers, or even the total number of homes.
Even more surprising, they also don’t know how the total stock of public housing has changed year by year since 2000.
Their explanation is simple enough… the information “has not been compiled”. And according to the Institute, gathering it would require pulling data from different systems and sources. Something they say they simply don’t have the staff or resources to do.
You can probably guess what happens when a system like that runs without proper oversight.
It gets messy.
Lawyers and property professionals say the lack of control has allowed all sorts of irregular situations to creep in over the years. Subsidised homes being sold while still protected, illegal rentals, missing documentation and properties changing hands without anyone really checking whether the rules were being followed.
Miguel Ángel Pulido, who was Director General of Housing for the Canary Islands government between 1997 and 2003, says he saw this lack of control first hand when he took office.
Sometimes the problem is even more basic.
In the Jinámar housing estate in Telde alone, more than 1,000 people were living in public housing without contracts. Homes had simply been passed between families informally and the government had to carry out a huge regularisation process to work out who actually qualified to be there.
More than twenty years later, it seems the situation hasn’t improved much.
A real estate agent in Las Palmas, Martín García from León Home Inversiones, tells the story of a client in Vecindario who bought a property years ago without being told it was subsidised housing. Neither the seller nor the notary mentioned it at the time.
Now the owner wants to sell.
Problem is… he can’t.
Because the property is still officially classified as protected housing, it can’t be sold freely on the open market until it’s formally declassified.
According to García, situations like this were surprisingly common years ago. Housing wasn’t the political hot topic it is today and oversight was fairly loose. As a result, subsidised homes were often bought and sold as if they were normal properties.
In one case involving a property in the Madera y Corcho area of Las Palmas, when García contacted ICAVI to find out how long remained before the property could be deregulated, the institute asked him to provide the original deed proving it was protected housing.
In other words, the public body responsible for managing the system didn’t have the documentation itself.
Lawyers say this happens more often than people realise, particularly in older developments where records are incomplete or scattered between different departments.
The result is that when owners try to sell, inherit or regularise a property years later, the administration often doesn’t have the full file.
There are other problems too.
Some subsidised homes sit empty. Others are rented out privately without authorisation or without verifying that tenants meet the required conditions. And dealing with the administration itself can be painfully slow, with appointments sometimes taking three months, six months or even a year.
To be fair, the regional government says it is trying to address the problem.
In 2023 the Housing Minister announced a plan to fill 72 vacant positions within ICAVI. But progress has been slow and many positions remain unfilled, with some currently being covered by temporary staff.
Another issue is that the Canary Islands still don’t have a dedicated inspection service for public housing. The administration usually only acts when someone files a complaint.
Which means empty homes or irregular situations can go unnoticed for years.
And while the system struggles with oversight, another long term problem has quietly reduced the number of protected homes available.
Between 1980 and 2023, more than 55,000 subsidised homes were built in the Canary Islands. But today the public housing stock stands at around 19,400 homes.
Most of the difference comes from properties leaving the system once their protection periods expire.
When that happens, homes originally built with public subsidies can be sold or rented at full market prices.
According to housing researchers, this effectively turns publicly supported housing into private assets over time, while simultaneously reducing the number of affordable homes available.
And in some areas, once these properties enter the open market, prices rise and original residents can end up being pushed out.
Which brings us back to the core problem.
It’s very difficult to manage a housing system properly when the authorities themselves don’t even have a complete list of the homes they’re supposed to be managing.
