The housing crisis is lived indoors, when we suffer for not finding a house. Out of doors, when we demonstrate or we see concentrations in portals where an eviction is being carried out. And now, also, at the international level, with a newspaper like the New York Times, one of the most important in the world, bringing out on the front page of its international edition the problems that exist in Barcelona to find decent housing.
The U.S. newspaper illustrates this report with an image of the Casa Orsola, one of the most recent symbols of neighborhood resistance to speculation and a strong headline:“City of lost homes and lost hope”.
Barcelona: ground zero of the housing crisis in Europe
The New York newspaper portrays Barcelona as “ground zero of Europe’s housing dilemma,” and puts on the table a reality we know well here: it is increasingly difficult, and more expensive, to live in the city.
The article points out that, since 2015, almost 10% of the housing stock in Spain has passed into the hands of investors or has been transformed into tourist apartments. Meanwhile, wages have not kept pace with price increases. “Scarcity has allowed prices to rise much faster than wages, which has put affordable housing out of reach for many people,” the report notes.
The report explains that Barcelona is not the only European city suffering from the phenomenon, but where the case is serious and urgent, more so with the high season about to begin, pressure on rentals intensifying, and attempts to regulate the market generating both headlines and controversy.
Casa Orsola, the great symbol
Symbols sometimes serve a purpose, and Casa Orsola is the example. The Eixample building, home to some of the biggest protests on the issue, is one of the main case studies in the report along with Casa Fajol (better known as Casa de la Papallona), another modernist building in the Eixample where neighbors denounce maneuvers to turn their homes into seasonal rentals.
The New York Times report reviews some of the measures announced by the administrations: from the promised construction of 50,000 public housing units, to the capping of rental prices or the moratorium on licenses for new tourist apartments. However, the report also includes critical voices such as the Socialist Housing Union of Catalonia, which considers that the solutions are not only insufficient, but also late.
In parallel , the newspaper also offers the vision of real estate platforms, such as Idealista, which warn of a fall in supply and defend a more stable regulatory framework.