Author: Leah Pattem
Across Spain, we’re facing an undeniable affordable housing crisis, where rent hikes consistently outstrip salary increases. More households than ever are struggling with housing costs, spending over 30% of our income on rent. In the whole of Madrid Centro, this is the case, yet national rent regulation laws aimed at high-tension areas are not enforced here as our regional right-wing government has opted out.
The full scale of this crisis extends far beyond official eviction statistics, with a largely overlooked issue: invisible evictions. Unlike formal evictions which go through the court system, landlords often push tenants out “informally” by dramatically raising rents or threatening such hikes, leaving tenants with no option but to move out. This practice is widespread but hard to measure, as there are no official records of these informal displacements.
In Lavapiés, I personally know of around 100 neighbours currently facing formal eviction, either because they can no longer afford their rent or because a vulture fund has purchased their building and is forcing them out. On top of this, in the last five years, around 10,000 people have voluntarily left the neighbourhood, most likely due to unaffordable rent increases. If we consider these voluntary departures as evictions, the total number of displacements could be 20 times higher.
The effects of eviction are enormous. Beyond the immediate trauma of being forced to move, displaced tenants face job instability, disruptions in their children’s education, heightened segregation and increased rates of depression and anxiety. This is not a formula for a healthy society.
Evictions are devastating our lives, and yet we don’t even have an accurate count of them. While we should demand the government create a database to track invisible evictions, we must also recognise their existence. If you’ve ever been pressured to move because you could no longer afford the rent, you have been evicted.
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