Trapped? Sub-letting and Squatting in Spain

A key social challenge in Spain is access and stay in housing. It is well known that the lack of affordable
housing causes a wide variety of social problems, from poverty, job insecurity and homelessness, to
educational inequalities and health problems. Many families are trapped in a cycle that prevents them
from entering the formal housing market again and are in some way condemned to move from illegal
occupation to illegal occupation or to sub-renting housing, often accepting (and even normalizing)
horrific living conditions.
All this implies that it is key to advance our understanding of what it means to lose the house or not
have it. Why a house is more than four walls and a roof. The houses we inhabit have profound
consequences for people’s lives and the vision of the home as a refuge often contradicts the reality of
the experience experienced, in particular, by many women. For many of them, a home is not a good
place to be, to rest, to rest. This is highlighted by recent research that shows how precarious housing
disproportionately affects women, putting them in a particularly vulnerable situation.
For this reason, we have designed and implemented a very careful research design to be able to access
a set of manifestations of precariousness of housing difficult to observe. We have completed most of
the data collection phase (the last two years) and now we are in the analysis and writing phase,
focusing on two specific manifestations of housing precariousness: the phenomenon of women (with
or without children) squatters. and sub-letting of rooms and other housing subunits