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Cáritas: Precarious Housing and Jobs Fuel Poverty Rise in the Canary Islands

The organization assisted over 21,000 individuals in Las Palmas in 2025, with an alarming 21% employed and 58% facing severe poverty after rent payments.

Symbolic image of poverty in the Canary Islands, with a hand emerging from a dark space towards a distant light.
IA

Symbolic image of poverty in the Canary Islands, with a hand emerging from a dark space towards a distant light.

Poverty is worsening in the Canary Islands despite economic growth, according to Cáritas, which identifies housing and precarious employment as the main causes of rising social exclusion.

Cáritas Diocesana de Canarias has released its 2025 institutional report, revealing that poverty on the islands is intensifying due to an unequal distribution of wealth. Despite positive economic indicators, social exclusion affects over half a million people, a structural phenomenon that the system has failed to adequately address, warned the Bishop of the Canary Islands, José Mazuelos.
In Las Palmas, Cáritas assisted 21,372 individuals in 2025, a 2% increase from the previous year. Strikingly, 46% of those seeking help did so for the first time, indicating growing vulnerability.
Caya Suárez, Secretary General of Cáritas in Las Palmas, highlighted housing as the primary driver of inequality. Rental and purchase prices far exceed average salaries, leading one in three people into residential exclusion. Over the past decade, housing prices have surged by over 75%, while wages have only increased by about 20%.
Suárez described a landscape of normalized "abusive practices" in the housing market, including substandard housing, overcrowding, shift-based bed rentals, and properties lacking basic services or contracts.
Another critical factor is job precarity. "It is surprising that, in a growing economy, employment is the second-largest factor generating social exclusion," Suárez stated. Twenty-one percent of individuals assisted by Cáritas hold precarious jobs or work in the informal economy, preventing them from meeting basic needs.
The most vulnerable profiles are women (61% of those assisted), many with dependent children, and migrants (54%). Child poverty is particularly concerning, affecting 42% of assisted families and 40% of children and adolescents in the Canary Islands, according to data from the Diputación del Común.
Cáritas director Gonzalo Marrero characterized poverty in the Canary Islands as "structural, chronic, and inherited." In response, Bishop José Mazuelos urged administrations to set aside "polarization" and focus on concrete solutions for housing and inflation, criticizing a "savage neocapitalism."

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