From property to rent

Abstract

In the wake of the rapid global spread of short-term rentals, new dynamics of dispossession and displacement unfold in Spain. Concerning the tourist agglomerations of the Canary Islands, short-term holiday rentals are increasingly dominating the housing market - coupled with considerable access barriers for low-income tenants and shopkeepers. After losing their mortgages and jobs during the real estate crisis of the last decade, these people are now more than ever dependent on affordable living and working spaces in the rental sector. Focusing on the tourist conurbation Los Cristianos / Las Americas, this article addresses these interdependencies by depicting its variegated dynamics of intra-urban real estate dispossession and displacement. Geo-referencing judicial registries of the database ATLANTE for the period 2001-2015, it elaborates the spatiotemporal patterns of mortgage foreclosures, tenant evictions, home dispossession and commercial real estate dispossession alike. Coupled with questionnaire surveys conducted in 2018, it further delves into the lived experiences of dispossession of local workers and residents, as well as their income and housing situations respectively. Closely tracking with the trajectories of crisis in Spain, mortgage foreclosures and home dispossession form a dominant feature in the years following the outbreak of the crisis 2008-2015, affecting mainly the central areas of Los Cristianos. Tenant evictions and commercial real estate dispossession, in turn, prevail more in less central areas of Playa de Las Americas. Showing notable increases from 2014 onwards, the temporalities of tenant evictions further point towards more recent trends of rental financialisation and its concomitant displacement dynamics. Indeed, the experiences of the respondents highlight that rental increases have become the key driver for involuntary displacement in 2018. These dynamics unfold against the backdrop of a housing market that favours a small amount of prop erty owners who manage the lion’s share of short-term rentals in the south of Tenerife, further pressurizing the local rental market. Not surprisingly, thus, staggeringly high rent and mortgage burdens that far exceed the affordability ratio are now a common feature among the respondents. Correspondingly, more than ten years after Spain’s housing sector collapsed, housing insecurities prevail, as low-income groups face enormous obstacles in establishing themselves on the housing market. Future research should advance these results more thoroughly, combining a more detailed database analysis with nuanced qualitative interviews. Beyond that, critically engaged and participatory research could provide initial help in fostering collective self-determination, given that, in the Canary Islands, a large-scale social housing movement is yet to come.