Editor’s Note: Guest contributor Greg Cantori continues his reflections on his and his family’s experience in moving this year from Maryland to Spain. He shares and compares the advantages and challenges of his new home. And offers us all a broader lens to reflect on life in the U.S. today. 

In my earlier post, I wrote about how living in Spain has shown me what personal safety actually feels like—the absence of a fear of guns and road violence, a fear I’d carried for decades without realizing it. My granddaughter rides her bicycle to school. We all walk home in the dark. No one is armed. No one will get kidnapped by masked government agents. But there’s another kind of violence here, quieter, and I’m complicit in it simply by being able to afford what young Spaniards cannot.

My extended family was going to arrive with three dogs and three cats, and finding housing was looking impossible. Spanish law makes eviction extraordinarily difficult, as squatting is a real issue here. Occupy a property for 48 hours, and removal can become a years-long legal odyssey, so landlords tend to refuse anyone they don’t know. Foreigners with six animals? Forget it. But we found a landlady willing to take a chance on us, sight unseen, animals and all. She gave us a place to land before we even saw the property or met her, and we’ve since found our permanent home: a townhome with an elevator and an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) downstairs for our extended family.

What surprised us is that ADUs are everywhere here—townhomes, villas, single-family homes with built-in spaces for multigenerational living. It’s not just a policy innovation; it’s cultural infrastructure. Back in Maryland, I spent years fighting for ADUs and tiny movable homes legislation, and the opposition was always the same: older silver-haired homeowners complaining about density, parking, “neighborhood character.” The irony? They’re the ones who’ll need these units most—yet they block housing they won’t get to have. In a few years, they’ll be gone or in nursing homes anyway. Here in Spain, that battle doesn’t exist. Extended family living together is just… normal.

It’s normal because young Spaniards can’t afford to leave.

The average age Spaniards leave their parents’ home is 30.4 years—the fourth highest in Europe. Nearly two-thirds of adults aged 18-34 still live with their parents, up from half in 2008.

The math is brutal. Average annual salary: $31,000. In the province of  Málaga, where our town of Benajarafe is located, renters spend 66% of their income on housing. In Barcelona’s and Madrid’s most expensive areas, rent can cost more than 100% of a young person’s income. Only financial help from relatives makes it work. 

A Costa del Sol townhome where we live costs $380,000-$450,000, comparable to suburban Maryland, except the median income here is nearly half.

Even with the weak dollar, we can only just afford this. Most young Spaniards cannot. We escaped *to* a country where locals are being pushed out.

We’re full-time residents, not vacation-home owners, aware of our impact, even if awareness doesn’t resolve the contradiction. Walk through coastal and other vacation towns from September to May, and you’ll see who’s driving the crisis.

Count the shutters. 

Every Spanish home has outside roll-down steel shutters, and when closed, you know: nobody’s there. I estimate roughly 75% of properties sit vacant—they are summer-only rentals, or homes owned by wealthy owners who visit once or twice yearly.

The homes exist. They’re just not for the people who live here. This is the worst of home hoarding —and hoarding is what the wealthy do by definition. 

Did you see the stories of protesters spraying tourists with water guns? They weren’t angry at individuals—they were firing at a system that’s converted neighborhoods into theme parks. Their banners read “Barcelona is for living, not surviving.”

Spain is making a good fight for the right to housing. The government ordered the removal of nearly 66,000 illegal Airbnb listings this year. Barcelona will eliminate 10,000 tourist apartments by 2028.

Besides this affordability crisis,  Spain also has a serious home safety problem!

Every property we’ve toured has high thresholds, random steps, dim lighting, and tile everywhere. Grab bars? None. 

My career has been about housing justice—fair housing, homes for the homeless, modifications for people with disabilities, safety for the poor and elderly. Spain requires every car to carry a reflective safety vest and portable GPS-enabled emergency roof light—but that innovation hasn’t reached the place where most injuries occur: their homes.

I am working on a vision to mandate that every staircase get a handrail. Every shower has a grab bar. Home safety should be internationally non-negotiable. 

When societies treat housing and safe homes as luxuries, the violence is quieter, but it’s still violence.