How Europe’s housing crisis is fuelling a new movement

It was billed as one of the largest real-estate events in Europe, attracting as many as 15,000 people ranging from investment firms to developers. But as the District trade show and summit got under way last week in Madrid, housing campaigners from 140 organisations across the globe turned up, intent on holding their own “counter-summit” to push back against the idea of housing as a financial asset.

Many of the campaigners arrived in the Spanish capital as Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair, was being evicted from the apartment where she had lived for seven decades. As anger over the eviction gave way to days of protests and an encampment in the heart of Madrid, the presence of campaigners from Italy to Ireland was a poignant reminder of the global dimension of the crisis.

The eviction underscored how brutal access to housing had become for so many around the world, said Teresa Mamede, a housing campaigner from Lisbon who travelled to Madrid for the counter-summit. “Nobody among us is safe from having this happen to them.”

The Guardian has long reported on the depth of the housing crisis across Europe. Within the EU, prices soared by 53% between 2010 and 2024, according to Eurostat, while rents increased 25% over the same period.

Not all countries have been hit equally; while Vienna remains a bright spot for its ample stock of public housing that has tempered rental costs, Estonia has seen rents surge 208% in the same time period, while Ireland and Hungary have seen increases of more than 100%.

Some of the soaring costs can be chalked up to the “ever-intensifying social experiment” playing out in Europe, research fellow Tim White noted last year, as officials see whether the machinations of finance capitalism can deliver on the fundamental need for housing. “The evidence now seems overwhelming: no.”

Instead, vulnerable people and minorities have been disproportionately affected by the market’s shortcomings, while others warn that the crisis could drive voters into the arms of the far right. “We cannot remain stuck in the rhetoric of defending democracy, inclusive societies and equal opportunities if people’s standard of living is getting worse,” Jaume Collboni, the mayor of Barcelona, told me last year.

Voters in Berlin, however, recently opted for another path. In a city where rents had climbed nearly 70% in the past decade, a quarter of voters backed the leftwing party Die Linke in this month’s state elections, making it Berlin’s strongest party. The strategy behind their success was far from rocket science, said Guardian Europe columnist Fatma Aydemir. “Because, more than any other party in this campaign, Die Linke made this issue [of housing] unmistakably its own: the question of who gets to live in Berlin, and at what price.”

‘This is just getting started’

Some have sought shared solutions to the shared crisis. At the Madrid counter-summit, campaigners launched a pan-European alliance to demand indefinite rental contracts and rent control across the continent.

Earlier this month, dozens of organisations launched the European Citizens’ Initiative, calling on people to sign their petition for EU-level measures to protect tenants, curb speculation and convert empty buildings into homes. “In every European country, in every major survey, and across all age groups, housing emerges as the number one concern of citizens,” the initiative notes. “We see and feel it every day: workers who can no longer afford the city they build, young people who cannot leave their parents’ home, tenants pushed out of their neighbourhoods after renovation, empty buildings while people sleep on the street.”

In Spain, where the days-long encampment in Madrid has led to similar camps in cities such as Barcelona, Seville and Palma de Mallorca, the protests have already begun to have an impact.

Maricarmen, the evicted octogenarian, will be allowed to return to her apartment, it was confirmed on Tuesday. Her rent will remain around the €500 a month she had paid for years – significantly less than the €2,650 the investment firm that owns her apartment had initially demanded.

This week the Spanish government also said it had approved two housing decrees that include reforms such as a ban on evictions until 2030, and the regulation of temporary lettings and lettings by room. But these measures will now have to win approval in the country’s fractured parliament.

What exactly comes next for the housing movement that has gripped Spain in recent days is anyone’s guess. With the spectre of general elections looming and the Socialist-led coalition scrambling to shore up its base of progressive voters, campaigners have spotted a singular opportunity to tackle an issue that Spaniards have long ranked as one of the country’s biggest problems.

“The coming days will be crucial,” the Madrid Tenants’ Union said on Tuesday as it called for further protests this weekend. “A historic window of opportunity has opened to reverse decades of the commodification of housing. That is why we need to step up the pressure.”

Or, as the Málaga Tenants’ Union put it in an online post: “This is just getting started.”

To receive the complete version of This Is Europe in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.