Adela Hervás, 63 years old, has been religiously paying rent for her apartment in Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona) since 1985. The rent, 228 euros per month, has allowed her to raise her two children on her own. But she has also invested in improving the home without asking anything from any of her five landlords. She has paid out of her own pocket to renew the electrical installation, install a security 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 over community fee arrears that, according to them, never occurred. It was just the beginning of what they describe as “continuous pressure” to leave their homes. For now, an eviction lawsuit has arrived. Now she and three other neighbors, who have been in the building since the early eighties, have decided to fight back and sue their landlord for harassment.
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The case of this neighborhood in Cornellà highlights how the rental crisis has spread to almost all territories and generations. The price hike, the tightening of conditions, and the shortage of rental housing hit young people who want to access their first home, but also those who already thought they had found their home forever. Rents have increased by more than 30% in major cities over 10 years, partly due to rising demand pressure and a shrinking supply, while wages have not risen at the same pace. Around one in three households still has to make an excessive effort to afford their rent. And the traditional refuges (or subterfuges) that have guaranteed a roof, such as room rentals, commercial premises converted into improvised housing, or indefinite contracts like Hervás’s, are increasingly less effective.
Rent control applied in some territories, particularly in Catalonia, has begun to change this map, but experts are also starting to see the first side effects: according to official data, prices and the financial effort of households are decreasing, but the market has lost momentum and it is more difficult to find an apartment.
The first consequence of the precarious rental market is the further delay in young people leaving their parental home. According to the Youth Council of Spain, the emancipation rate stands at 14.8%, its historic low. The data handled by that body are telling: the average salary of 1,048.19 euros a young person earns per month does not cover the 1,072 euros (plus about 120 for utilities) they should pay for an average rent. In this situation, the entry door to independence is temporary or room rentals.
“In the seventies and eighties, room rentals gradually declined, although they rebounded at other times. But it was 15 years ago when it professionalized as a market niche and we see how homes are compartmentalized to rent rooms,” says Jaime Palomera, director of the Housing and City Area of the Barcelona Urban Research Institute (IDRA). According to a study by the Catalan Government, which already points to renting as one of the major sources of social inequality, the volume of rooms managed by companies has multiplied by 10 in just five years.
The Tenants’ Union has been denouncing that several investment funds and large real estate companies try to evict tenants with old rents or affordable leases to replace them with more profitable ones. Or through formulas like coliving or tourist rentals. In many cases, these two formulas are the ways many companies seek to circumvent state and regional regulations that aim to provide tenant stability or set rent caps.
“In large cities, many companies are opting to offer housing temporarily and avoid regulations like those in Catalonia. In the end, this adds precariousness to renting, normalizing situations like subletting or shared apartments,” says Raluca Budian, associate director of the Esade Digna Housing Observatory. “This is affecting people of all ages. We have gone from ‘I can’t become independent from my parents’ to ‘I can’t become independent from my roommates,’” she adds.
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But even finding a room is not easy. María S. J., 42 years old, knows this well, as she is fighting to stay in the commercial premises in Barcelona’s Eixample district where she has been for five years despite not having a certificate of habitability. “They told me they would give it to me, but they never did,” she laments. With a one-and-a-half-year-old child, she has been looking for an apartment for months to leave that hot ground floor and, above all, because she received a burofax demanding she cease her commercial activity—because she never received the certificate—and leave. She now pays 850 euros a month, and it is already complicated. “The market is impossible. I have asked the owner to renew. I already went once to the Tenants’ Union when they threatened to evict me due to a flood in which they entered the house without permission, and I have done it again now. A single mother with a paycheck does not have it easy to find an apartment. And even less a room,” she explains.
María S. J.’s case is not unique. 7.6% of citizens who participated in the INE Living Conditions Survey said they had been unsuccessfully looking for housing. Most, for economic reasons. Faced with this market situation, experts disagree on the measures to be taken. José García Montalvo, professor of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University, is critical of the price controls applied by cities in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Navarra, Asturias, or Galicia. “We are in a battle over the narrative and right now the data is a mess,” he laments. The professor believes that rent caps have fulfilled their mission of lowering prices and reducing the effort that housing entails. “But those indicators refer to those who already have an apartment, not to those who are left out and have none. For them, the situation is now worse,” he maintains.
Jorge Galindo, director of EsadeEcPol, agrees on that last point. “If the housing stock is not expanded to meet rental demand, it will become increasingly competitive, affecting the most vulnerable profiles such as young people or migrants, who are bearing the worst part of this precariousness,” says Galindo, who advocates policies to mobilize housing such as more ambitious public insurance and to control other non-residential uses where these are a problem. He points to formulas like the creation of specific taxes similar to Zohran Mamdani’s in New York.
Rental Temporality
Adela Hervás’s case, however, shows that even those with indefinite contracts cannot breathe easy. Silvia García, who pays 700 euros for an apartment in the Sagrada Familia neighborhood in Barcelona, also attests to this. She is also facing eviction due to contract expiration. But García feels, if anything, more powerless. She was never able to be listed on the lease because it was always in her partner’s name. “I have tried several times during renewals to be added to the contract. But it was impossible,” she laments. She also failed when her partner separated and returned to his city. Now the landlord, a large holder, has decided to evict her and has gone directly to her ex-partner, completely ignoring her. “Thirteen years ago, when I arrived, apartments rented for 550 euros here. Now they are already 1,200 euros a month,” she protests.
Jaime Palomera, who supports price control, points out that rental regulation has focused a lot on setting caps and not so much on contract duration. “We have been witnessing a process of invisible evictions, in which without the need for court orders people have been leaving their homes,” Palomera explains, recalling that the United Kingdom has decided to give tenants greater stability. A rule approved in 2025 establishes that the legal occupant of an apartment can remain as long as they comply with the contract and the owner has no legal cause to terminate it, ending unjustified evictions. That is precisely what Adela Hervás seeks: to be given a reason why she must leave her home where she has lived since she was 22 years old. “We are going all the way,” she warns.
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