Argentines struggle with major housing crisis
Silvia Gauna is struggling to make the rent on the one-room Buenos Aires apartment she shares with her teenage daughter. High inflation has driven up rents, with salaries and employment hit by recession. Gauna herself lost her long-term job in August. Now the 49-year-old risks losing her home, one of a growing number of Argentines straining under rental payments as an economic crisis and popular anger tips South America’s No 2 economy back towards populism ahead of presidential elections this month.
Gauna’s plight reflects a broader housing crisis. In the wealthy capital alone, two-fifths of people have difficulty making rent as prices have outstripped salaries, according to the city’s independent ombudsman office, double the level in March last year. Homelessness has risen and many houses stand empty.
“I hope the economic situation improves because inflation is killing us, it’s emptying our pockets. Either we eat, or we pay our bills, or we pay the rent,” Gauna said in her apartment, where the shared bedroom doubles as a dining and living room.
Gauna, who works as a hotel receptionist, lost her long-term position two months ago, just as President Mauricio Macri was dealt an unexpected landslide defeat in primary elections.
The rental crisis underscores broader dynamics in Argentina ahead of elections likely to oust Macri. The centre-rightist, a former Buenos Aires mayor, came to power promising to spur investment and eradicate poverty, but now looks set to leave office with millions more in hardship.
Peronist Alberto Fernandez is heavily favoured to win the October 27 vote. He is running alongside Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who served as Argentina’s president from 2007 to 2015 and won strong support among many Argentines with public subsidies to reduce living costs, especially among the poor.
Gervasio Muñoz, president of a local tenants’ organisation, said Macri’s market-oriented reforms and the country’s economic crisis had combined to put a squeeze on housing costs and renters. “With rent increases across the board, people can’t cope because of delayed salaries and tough market rules,” he said.
“It’s been a long time, since I think (the economic crisis of) 20012002, that we’ve seen a situation where so many families in Argentina don’t know where they will live because they can no longer pay rent.”
Ahead of the vote, Macri has rolled out popular measures to bolster jobs and cut taxes, though many blame his administration’s deregulation of the housing market for high rents and for failing to get inflation under control.