No Place Like (Someone Else’s) Home
In Spain, thousands of homeless people are squatting, and owners are using rough tactics to try and get them out
VERONICA and her three small children live in a modernist building in a quiet Barcelona neighborhood. The apartment is perfect for the young family, except for one thing: They are there illegally. Veronica, who declined to give her last name for fear of eviction, is among the thousands of people throughout Spain squatting in vacant apartments.
Before Veronica became a squatter, she and her children slept in a cockroach-infested room she rented, which is why she was willing to break the law. “I didn’t have any other option, especially with children,” she tells Newsweek.
Many Spaniards share her desperation. The country’s economy has recovered from 2008’s devastating global financial crisis, but nearly 2 million Spaniards can’t afford a decent place to live, according to Habitat 3, a Spanish nongovernmental organization that works to increase affordable housing.
Part of the problem is that there isn’t much public housing. But others point to the glut of empty apartments—many of them repossessed by banks during the financial crisis. Over the past several years, tens of thousands of homeless Spaniards have begun to move into these empty buildings. Illegally. The owners, many of them banks the government bailed out during the crisis, have tried to kick them out, using both Spain’s sluggish court system and private security guards.
Housing is available, but much of it is owned by banks. In 2016, 1.5 million units were for sale in Spain, according to consultancy RR de Acuña & Asociados. And many more empty properties are not on the market, as owners wait for prices
to rise. Many of these properties need renovations or are in rural areas where there is little demand, according to housing analysts.
This imbalanced market has spurred homeless Spaniards across the country to take over entire buildings. Nationwide, almost 45,000 buildings have been squatted in the past five years, according to government figures seen by local media. In Barcelona, those looking to move into an empty property can visit the unofficial “office for housing” run by activists, located, of course, in a squatted building.
The phenomenon has even changed the way real estate agents work. “It’s rare that we put an advert in the window or on the balcony of a property, as we used to, because it’s very likely that you will end up with an illegal occupation,” says Lorenzo Viñas, head of the Landlords Association for Barcelona and Lleida.
Another reason there are so many squatters: It’s easy to become one. If squatters remain undetected for the first 48 hours, they can avoid criminal prosecution and fight their case in civil court, with the right to appeal. In Spain’s slow-moving judicial system, it takes an average of two years to remove a squatter. In the meantime, the owners are responsible for any utility bills in their name.
The eagerness to remove squatters has created a business opportunity that is legally gray. Spain’s equivalent of Craigslist has a half-dozen advertisements offering extrajudicial evictions. The industry’s self-proclaimed pioneer is a Barcelona-based company called Desokupa, loosely translated in Spanish as “unsquat.” Desokupa begins by negotiating with squatters, frequently offering them money to leave. Failing that, Desokupa places a guard outside the property 24/7 to prevent residents from returning if they go out. Or it sends in one of the large men (ex-military and boxers) it employs to “negotiate” with tenants, Desokupa says. The price for an eviction starts at $3,360, though it can be substantially more if the squatters are dangerous.
Desokupa’s co-founder J. (who would not give his full name because the company has been receiving regular anonymous threats) likens himself to the Bill Gates of eviction. He stumbled on his methods a few years ago, after squatters occupied several of his properties. “I don’t do anything illegal. I don’t threaten anyone,” he says. “The only thing I do is strengthen private property.”
Landlords, of course, are up against tenants who operate outside the law: Activists encourage squatting in property owned by banks that received taxpayer-funded bailouts. They say this property should be publicly subsidized housing. Platform for Mortgage Victims (PAH), a housing rights group, claims to have helped more than 3,500 families squat since the crisis began. In Catalonia, banks hold more than 43,000 empty repossessed properties, of which almost 9,000 are squatted, according to Habitat 3.
Housing activists want legislation that encourages banks to convert property they are struggling to sell into public housing. “We have a great opportunity in our country to buy [surplus] housing stock at low prices and use it for social means,” says Carme Trilla, head of Habitat 3. But without legislation, she says, banks prefer to wait for a better return on their investment. Some city councils, including Barcelona’s, have responded by slapping fines on banks that keep empty properties on their books in hopes that the market will recover.
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, a former spokeswoman for PAH, has tried to implement other measures to put more people in homes. Barcelona aims to increase public housing from 3 percent to around 15 percent of the city’s total housing supply in the next decade, and it has introduced subsidies for landlords to renovate old apartments, provided they agree to rent them at affordable prices. It has also introduced teams to detect those at risk of eviction and offer subsidies to insolvent tenants unable to pay rent.
Since Veronica entered her apartment last August, the bank that owns the building has sold it. Its new owners have announced plans to convert the property into luxury apartments, so Veronica is once again looking for a place to live. Still, she is grateful to the local activists for finding her an apartment. “I don’t feel bad about having done it,” she says. “Now I just have to fight so they give me public housing.”
A single parent with young children, she may jump to the top of the waiting list. But others won’t be so lucky. They’ll have to go looking for an empty apartment to break into.
IF THEY CAN AVOID DETECTION FOR THE FIRST 48 HOURS, SQUATTERS CAN AVOID CRIMINAL PROSECUTION.