No refuge from precarious rent: “It’s affecting people of all ages”
Young people with no way of entering the market and neighbors with old rents threatened with eviction illustrate that renting rooms or an open-ended contract have ceased to be a guarantee of access to housing.
Adela Hervás, 63, has been religiously paying rent for her apartment in Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona) since 1985. The rent, 228 euros a month, has allowed her to bring up her two children on her own. But also to invest in improving the housing without asking any of her five landlords for anything. She has put the money from her own pocket to renovate the electrical installation, put in a reinforced door or order new blinds.
She had never had any problems. Until five years ago, when Adela and other neighbors saw how the owner, a subsidiary of a large international fund, took them to court for non-payment of the community, which, they explain, never occurred. That was just the beginning of what they describe as “continuous pressure” to leave their homes.
Meanwhile, an eviction lawsuit has arrived. Now she and three other neighbors, who have been in the building since the beginning of the eighties, have decided to counterattack and denounce their landlord for harassment.
Translated by urgent.news from El Pais Economia's report; automated translation may contain errors. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
