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The eviction of an 87-year-old Spanish woman has caused an outcry across Europe. Her case has also brought renewed attention to a housing crisis that is increasingly forcing ordinary people to the brink.

In Greece, where rents have soared and thousands of homes have been converted into short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb, people who once considered themselves securely housed are finding themselves struggling to stay in the homes they can afford.

Here are their stories.

Maria, 65

“They didn’t even give me time to finish my chemotherapy”

“2026 was an extremely difficult year for our family, full of upheaval and unexpected developments. Literally overnight, we found ourselves out on the street, while at the same time serious health problems emerged. My son has an 80% disability rating, and I was fighting cancer.

Our family rented a 70-square-metre ground-floor house in Ilioupoli, a southern suburb of Athens, for €700 a month.

But in mid-January 2026, our lives were suddenly turned upside down. We were served with a formal legal notice informing us that the owner did not intend to renew the lease and asking us to leave the property within three months.

The news came like a bolt from the blue, at an especially critical moment for our family. I had just been diagnosed with cancer and needed to devote myself to dealing with it, while at the same time I was desperately worried about finding a new home.

My son, through his lawyer, filed an application for an injunction before the Athens Court of First Instance. In it, we stated that ‘both my family and I are objectively unable to devote the financial resources required to immediately search for suitable new accommodation.’

We expressed our fear ‘of finding ourselves without secure housing, with extremely serious consequences for our health, safety and dignified living.’

We asked for an extension of a few months so that I would have the necessary time to complete my chemotherapy treatment.

However, the legal action did not have the outcome we had hoped for.

At the same time, the severe housing crisis affecting the country — and particularly the Attica region, which includes Athens — has sharply reduced the availability of properties for rent.

My family decided to look for a new home outside Athens…”

Stefania S., 31

“If the rent rises much further, the answer may be… a caravan”

“I am in limbo.

My income is just slightly above the ceiling set by the state for me to qualify for a housing programme. At the same time, I have far too little in savings to be able to afford a home of my own.

So I have been living in the same apartment for the past 12 years. When I arrived in Athens at 18 to study, it was my ‘dream home’: all I needed was a room, its tiny bathroom and its microscopic kitchen.

Now, at 30, after exhausting hours of work every day, I share that same home with Nala, my ‘child’, as we single-parent families who care for a small pet like to say.

I am not thinking of having another family beyond this one.

My partner and I used to joke that one day we would live in a caravan. That could become the solution if the rent rises to an unaffordable level.

Or I could return to my parents’ home, hundreds of kilometres away from the life I want to live.

I am left suspended between the two — and frustrated.”

Niki, 22

“€400 a month for a tiny rooftop storage room”

“My ordeal began at the end of May.

Without the money to hire an estate agent, I searched entirely on my own. I told friends, relatives and colleagues, hoping that word of mouth might lead me to a good opportunity — a studio or a one-bedroom apartment.

In June, necessity led me to stay temporarily at a friend’s home in Kallithea, in southern Athens. What I thought would be a temporary arrangement turned into full-time cohabitation as the days relentlessly passed.

From the very first day, the search for a home became an exhausting part-time job, involving endless phone calls and viewings.

My phone filled up with contacts labelled ‘Ano Kypseli’, ‘Zografou’, ‘One-bedroom Neos Kosmos’, ‘Studio Polygono’ and ‘Furnished Exarchia’ — neighbourhoods across Athens where I was searching for somewhere to live.

The first ‘apartment’ I saw, in Gyzi, was not even a proper home. It was a tiny storage room on a rooftop, being rented for €400 a month.

Dozens of other properties followed.

Everywhere I went, I was promised that I would be given priority — alongside endless lists of other prospective tenants. Some landlords even went so far as to demand an outrageous 12 months’ rent upfront.

I had become completely desperate by Christmas Eve, after seven and a half months of searching.

Then, salvation came from nowhere.

A painter who knew my father told him that he was painting a house that had just become vacant. I went to see the apartment that very same day. We signed the lease, and in mid-January I finally moved in.

The home is decent and the landlord is a good person.

And yet I am still constantly afraid that something will change — that one day he might decide to turn it into an Airbnb or raise the rent.”

Panagiotis, 45

“€300 declared to the tax office, €300 ‘under the table’ — and 12 months upfront”

“I lived in the same home for 12 years — a 72-square-metre apartment in Neos Kosmos — paying €500 in rent.

I always paid on time: through the financial crisis, the years of austerity imposed under Greece’s bailout programs, and the pandemic.

At some point, I began encountering people from all over the world on the stairs: Chinese, Americans, French, Italians, tourists dragging suitcases and carrying codes for lockboxes.

One by one, the apartments were becoming Airbnbs.

In the end, the wheels of those suitcases were the harbinger of the phone call:

‘Either €800 or you leave at the end of the month.’

I entered the rental market drenched in sweat and, as I soon realized, completely broke. I went through a series of auditions by landlords and estate agents.

And when I finally found a house from the 1960s for €650 a month, my former landlord came back with a generous counteroffer: €600.

No, the landlord had not gone mad.

He wanted €300 declared to the tax authorities and the other €300 ‘under the table’.

And he wanted it paid in advance for an entire year…”

Ioannis Semertzidis, 28

Special education teacher: “As soon as they hear you’re a substitute teacher, they reject you”

“I was furious. I was disheartened.

In just ten days, I viewed 20 homes, looking for a decent apartment at a price I could afford.

Everyone asks for a deposit equivalent to three or four months’ rent. That is unthinkable for a substitute teacher, whose only income over the previous three months had been unemployment benefits.

But the problem does not end there.

As soon as they hear that you are a substitute teacher, they reject you because they know you will leave in a few months.

They prefer a student who will probably stay for four years.

I ended up viewing a basement apartment in Aigaleo, in terrible condition, for €500.

At other times, you find yourself ‘playing’ against estate agents, because the property ultimately goes to whoever offers the most.

In one sentence, it is a desperate situation.”

Marilena, 27

“After the bills and fixed expenses, we have nothing left”

“When the minimum wage is €800, you are forced to work two jobs, and even then it is not enough to find a home that you will use merely as somewhere to sleep.

My partner, Konstantinos, and I have been looking for more than a year for a home where we can live together.

But prices in every neighborhood in central Athens are genuinely prohibitive for our budget.

I give private lessons in the afternoons, while in the mornings I work as a secretary at a company.

Konstantinos also works in a shop.

The money we earn is not enough.

Rents are high, and once you add the fixed household expenses, we would have nothing left.

We cannot live like this.”