In Spain, a lottery as a symbol of the housing crisis

"At first, I felt a great euphoria, then a feeling of unreality," confided the thirty-year-old, who followed the lottery live on social media.

The caregiver finally believed it when a town hall employee told her that a computer had selected her name along with those of 63 other lucky ones from among the 44.000 applicants for social housing in the Villa de Vallecas neighborhood, in southern Madrid.

For two years, before landing this apartment with a rent of 550 euros, the young woman scoured ads to find a rental with her fiancé. In vain: the couple had to live separately, each with their parents, well into their thirties.

"Depending on luck to be able to emancipate oneself is a reality that we live in this country," laments Lorena Pacheco's partner, Sergio Encinas, 31.

"It's quite sad, because you have a job, you work 40 hours a week, and you realize that with your salary, you can't afford to manage on your own," adds this salesman, who earns 1.200 euros "in good months."

Rents have jumped

The surge in Madrid rents, which have jumped 82% in a decade according to the leading real estate portal Idealista, has put private housing out of reach for many households.

And the social housing stock is very limited: in 2024, Madrid had 9.200 low-rent housing units for 3,4 million inhabitants, one of the lowest figures in the European Union.

The city, led by the right, aims to reach 15.000 social housing units by 2027.

By comparison, Paris has 260.570 social housing units for 2,1 million inhabitants, and Berlin has around 100.000 for 3,4 million inhabitants.

To allocate these rare homes, each quarter the city of Madrid puts between 50 and 200 apartments into play in a lottery accessible under certain income and residence conditions.

"More than 80% of these homes have been allocated to young people under 35 and to families," the deputy mayor in charge of housing, Álvaro González, told AFP. "These new tenants will never spend more than 30% of their monthly income on their housing," the elected official said.

However, this lottery only meets 1% of demand.

"We are facing a deficit of more than 600.000 homes, while 120.000 new homes are created each year and only 90.000 are built," summarizes Idealista spokesperson Francisco Iñareta, referring indiscriminately to private and social housing.

Anger

This shortage of goods, combined with rising rents and the development of tourist apartments, has plunged the country into an unprecedented crisis.

In Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, thousands of people frequently demonstrate to demand solutions.

In these three cities, rents have increased by around 20% in one year, according to Idealista: for Rodrigo Sainz, a thirty-year-old living in Madrid, this represents 150 euros per month, to be shared with his two roommates.

In protest, the three began a "partial rent strike" in October and are not paying the rent increase. "We're doing this so that, collectively, we can have decent access to housing," explains the circus instructor, whose apartment belongs to an investment fund.

"Housing must be a right, not a market commodity with which one can speculate," he urges.

Since 2023, Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced several measures to address the emergency, including accelerating the construction of social housing and increasing taxes on tourist accommodation.

However, the exercise is difficult, summarizes Francisco Iñareta, the spokesperson for Idealista: "The coercive measures have driven owners away from the market," he assures, emphasizing that "young people and the disadvantaged classes" had been the first victims.

"Landlords are not the problem but part of the solution. It is therefore crucial to approach the market pragmatically," he believes.