You don’t remember it because you’re very young, but almost twenty years ago, the streets of our cities were filled with stickers with a resounding slogan: “You’ll never have a house in your fucking life.” At bus stops, in the windows of banks and real estate agencies, on street lamps, everywhere you could see these yellow stickers, as well as on posters calling for an upcoming demonstration. This was the beginning of housing activism, at a time when the real estate bubble was causing apartment prices to skyrocket, inaccessible to a majority of young people (and not so young).
Those of us who were then young (and not so young) and who could not buy an apartment, spent less time on rent, even though we endured all the landlords telling us that “renting is a waste of money, don’t be stupid and buy something.” And what happened was that after a few years, because of the crisis, the young (and not so young) who could not buy a house because prices were very high and salaries were at their lowest, we also started to have problems renting. The speculative pressure moved from the buying and selling market to the rental market, and rents began to rise, rise and rise, and there we continue: reaching the historical maximum every month and without the ceiling being visible. So, for many young (and not so young) people, the sticker was replaced by “You will never rent a house in your fucking life”.
