Tens of thousands of people chanted in Barcelona, Spain on November 23, 2024, in one of the largest housing protests of all time. The city joins a wave of mobilization that has sparked from Madrid to Seville, Valencia and other big cities over the past few months, all calling for urgent housing reforms. Rental prices in Spain have soared by 78% in the past few months, according to an independent report. 10 years.
But rent wasn’t the only cause demonstrators defended during the nationwide protests. The general demand of Spain’s mobilized civil society was for inclusive and non-discriminatory housing. This is an issue that affects not only foreign residents living in Spain, but also Spaniards from different ethnic backgrounds and religious minorities.
A government-backed study published in 2024 by the Provivienda organization found that seven out of ten Spanish real estate agents refuse to rent/sell to people based on their origin, even if they meet all other requirements. A problem not limited to Spain: According to the European Organization for Fundamental Rights (FRA), 31% of people of African descent in Europe experienced racial discrimination when trying to rent or buy an apartment or house between 2016 and 2022. Among Muslims, 26% believe their background prevents them from accessing housing.
“The right to housing is incomplete as long as racial discrimination prevails,” the Barcelona-based Observatory for Social Rights and Ecological Justice (DESCA) said in 2022. Miguel Ruiz, a housing researcher at the Observatory Today and a collaborator on the Provivienda study, says: “There is a significant portion of the population who are completely excluded from the housing market because of their skin colour, first name, surname or accent,” Voxeurop said.
“Irreversible damage to humanity”
Miguel Ruiz claims that he sees this phenomenon every day through his research, but still says, “We only believe in two sanctions at the national level, both of which were announced by the Barcelona City Council.”
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In light of recent findings, the lack of sanctions is concerning. A Provivienda study found that the level of direct discrimination in the Spanish housing market was as high as 72.5%, with real estate agents in some cases directly accepting not to offer deals to people from foreign backgrounds.
When discriminatory terms are not openly accepted, the same study found that 81.8% of agents practice relative discrimination, such as asking for higher prices, shortening contract terms, or adding offensive clauses.
“Depending on their purchasing power, they could live somewhere else, in better conditions, but they end up living in a worse place or on the outskirts,” says Miguel. In fact, when purchasing power and family size are the same, it appears that more large apartments are provided to Koreans (50.4%) than to foreigners (39.8%). Likewise, blocks with elevators are more rarely represented in the segregated group, only 21.2% of the time.
“This has long-lasting psychological effects, because it is not a trivial thing to feel that you are inhumane or a second-class citizen,” emphasizes Miguel Ruiz from the DESCA Observatory. According to a report released in December last year, regardless of nationality, people experiencing housing instability have worse mental health than the general population, and more than 80% of respondents show these symptoms.
“I believe that rejection causes irreversible damage to humans.” Aziz Sabani describes his reaction when he faced direct discrimination when he tried to move into an apartment a few years ago. He had a smooth transaction over the phone with the real estate agent and everything was fine. Until I saw his name on the day I signed the contract.
“I probably went unnoticed because of my level of Spanish and Catalan at the time,” Aziz told Voxeurop. Although he was born in Morocco, he also made Spain his home for 23 years. “The girl managing my file asked persistently on the phone if I was the same person and said we had a problem. The owners had reservations about renting to ‘outsiders’.”
The main victims are Africans and Muslims.
High-profile cases such as the 2005 lawsuit filed in Austria over advertisements offering ‘Austrians only’ or ‘no foreigners allowed’ properties, and the 2012 lawsuit against an Algerian couple who refused to rent to them because they “didn’t want Arabs in their house”. French sisters fined , and many others, have made public and housing actors across Europe “increasingly aware of anti-discrimination laws,” making overt discrimination and advertising “more rare.” As early as 2013, a European Commission report found that “it is incredibly difficult to demonstrate that a denial of property release is based on non-discrimination grounds.”
But less explicit statements don’t mean things are getting better. Nicole Romain, the European Union’s spokesperson for fundamental rights, told Voxeurop that the latest report and findings show that “increasing intolerance and hatred across Europe has led to increased violence against Jews, Muslims, people of African descent, and Roma.” “It’s affecting too many people, including migrants,” he said. In particular, she argues that people of African descent and Muslims “experience the harshest discrimination in the labor and housing markets, which affects not only their future prospects but also those of their children.”
The second edition of the reports ‘Being Black’ and ‘Being Muslim in the EU’ found that the discrimination these groups experience when looking for a place to live is 21% and 22% higher respectively than in 2016. These practices result in almost one in two people of African descent (45%) living in overcrowded housing, a rate 2.5 times higher than the general EU population. For Muslims, the number is 40%.
“According to the 2022 survey, Germany (62%), Austria (49%), Belgium (44%) and Italy (43%) reported the highest rates of racial discrimination in access to housing,” an FRA spokesperson said. . “Similarly, Muslim respondents reported encountering high levels of racial discrimination when accessing housing, with the highest rates in Germany (54%), Austria (50%), Belgium and Finland (both 43%).”
Juan Carlos Benito Sánchez, a human rights law expert specializing in housing, told Voxeurop that Western European countries, especially Belgium, where he is based, have better tracking systems.
“In places like Belgium, we have strong and well-funded institutions to oppose discrimination, to conduct research, to receive complaints directly from people who believe they have been discriminated against, to file complaints and initiate investigations. “There is this,” he explains. “In Spain the system is not that strong.”
“We always try to push public policy to get more data on discrimination,” agrees Miguel Ruiz of the Spanish Observatory. “We know that at least two million people have been forced from their homes between 2018 and 2024, but we don’t know how many of those are Spanish nationals, how many are from ethnic or racial minorities and how many are women. doesn’t exist… “It’s not registered anywhere.”
A call to end the real estate status quo.
In both Spain and the rest of Europe, Dr. Juan Carlos Benito Sánchez believes that “the right to non-discrimination is underutilized to respond to problems related to housing” and that its potential is “to realize the right to housing more broadly and ensure that everyone “We’ve gone much further to ensure access to decent, affordable housing.”
FRA’s latest fundamental rights report shows that rising housing prices mean “many people, not just those with a migrant background, are unable to afford to heat their homes or rent decent accommodation,” spokeswoman Nicole Romain emphasized to Voxeurop.
“By 2022, the number of Europeans unable to afford to keep their homes adequately warm will rise to more than 40 million (9.3% of the population),” she adds. This has affected vulnerable groups more directly.
On this basis, the Agency recommends using existing evidence to enforce existing laws and end housing discrimination, taking into account that combating poverty and social exclusion is a key objective of the European Pillar of Social Rights action plan. We urge the nation to: The 2021-2027 Action Plan on Inclusion and Inclusion to 2030 reiterates that “access to adequate and affordable housing is a key determinant of successful inclusion.”
Researcher Miguel Ruiz says housing discrimination and the general price crisis are linked and have a common solution. That means fighting against the current status quo, which exempts real estate agents from following the rules.
“Real estate agents have been allowed to not comply with any type of law for many years. That means setting up abusive clauses, failing to advise tenants correctly, helping landlords carry out fraudulent activities and discriminating,” he says. “It is unacceptable to not properly monitor and supervise housing market entities, which are basic rights, and a lot of administrative effort is needed to achieve this.”
