Barcelona builds 42 apartments made out of containers to host vulnerable people

Dozens of recycled transport containers have been used to construct a building of 42 apartments in Barcelona's Glòries neighborhood to host vulnerable people. Families moved into their new houses on Wednesday, hoping to get a second chance.

Social services have been helping these families for the last few months. 35 of these households are single parents hoping to "recover" and "start a new life" thanks to this opportunity. 

Djamila Bensabeur is a 25-year-old mother that will soon move to the new construction with her two sons. 

"I arrived to Catalonia over eight years ago when I was underage, and I spent two years in a center," she said before adding that after leaving, she had her documentation but "without any work permit."

Now her three and five-year-old sons have their room and are looking forward to sleeping in their new house and spending their first Christmas together in their new home.

The vast majority of the new residents, 86%, had been living in a hostel for the last two years. 

Barcelona's mayor Ada Colau took the chance of urging the Catalan government for more public housing options and for the Spanish cabinet to regulate rent prices. 

In fact, the cost of renting in the Catalan capital has increased by 51% in only eight years, pushing monthly prices to over €1,000.

Back when the project was announced, many criticized the initiative as "lame" as the council was using recycled containers to build homes. 

"It's a pride being in this building that will host 100 people, among them 35 single-parent families with complicated life experiences after suffering a lot of precarity and exclusion from society," Ada Colau said during a press conference.

Second building

APROP, the name the building has, is the second container experience in Barcelona after the council built one in 2019 in the Ciutat Vella neighborhood. 

The recently inaugurated one in Glòries has seven floors in total and has been built in only 26 weeks. 

"These are dignified and high-quality houses with a lot of natural light," Colau said before adding that they have been built in "record time." 

But for the mayor, the issue is not on the lack of construction but on the political will to have more public housing options. 

"Barcelona is leading the Spanish housing policies as the city is doing more on the matter than Catalan and Spanish governments combined," she said. 

For her, it is "scandalous" that the Catalan capital has promoted over 2,000 new apartments, but the Catalan government only 40.

If you want to learn more about the housing crisis in Barcelona, listen to our Filling the Sink podcast episode from November 26.