when a home stops being a home

 when a home stops being a home

An 87-year-old woman in Spain has become the face of a housing crisis that is much bigger than one apartment.

Maricarmen Abascal had lived in her Madrid home for seven decades.

Then the apartment was bought by an investment fund, and according to reports, the rent she was asked to pay increased by 230%.

She couldn't afford it.

This week, images of Maricarmen being removed from her home on a stretcher, surrounded by police and protesters, travelled across Spain.

And people took to the streets.

Thousands gathered in Madrid, some carrying signs saying “Shame” and “Out with the vulture funds.” Others rattled keys and called for changes to housing laws.

But underneath the protests is a much bigger question:

When does housing stop being about having somewhere to live and become primarily about making money?

According to the figures reported in this week's coverage, rents in Spain have risen about 80% in a decade, while home prices have increased about 63%.

At the same time, Spain is estimated to have more than 3 million empty homes, while social housing makes up only about 2.5% of the country's housing stock.

So there is a strange contradiction:

People need homes.

Homes exist.

And yet people can still be homeless.

Maricarmen's story also raises another uncomfortable question:

What happens to people who are aging on fixed or limited incomes when the price of housing rises dramatically around them?

You can spend your entire life in a neighbourhood and still discover that you can no longer afford to live there.

You can be 87.

You can have lived in the same home for 70 years.

You can have nowhere else that feels like home.

And the legal system can still ultimately say: you have to leave.

That doesn't mean every landlord, homeowner, investor or eviction case is the same. Housing law is complicated, and property owners have rights too.

But perhaps that is exactly why Maricarmen's eviction has become such a powerful symbol.

It forces people to look at the question that is much harder to answer:

What is a home actually for?

For shelter?

For family?

For security in old age?

For building wealth?

For investment?

For corporations?

Can it be all of those things at once?

And what happens when those purposes collide?

Spain isn't the only country wrestling with these questions.

Look around almost any major city and you'll find some version of the same conversation: rising rents, people being pushed farther from where they work, older people struggling on fixed incomes, younger people unable to buy, vacant properties, short-term rentals, investors, social housing shortages and governments arguing over who has the power to fix it.

Maricarmen's eviction has become a reminder that housing isn't an abstract number on a real-estate website.

Behind every apartment is a person.

Behind every eviction statistic is a household.

And behind every housing-market graph are lives being rearranged.

Maybe the real question isn't simply:

“How much is this property worth?”

Maybe we also need to ask:

“How much is a person's home worth?”

And who gets to decide?

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