La PAH is a housing movement that formed in Barcelona at the peak of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis as people were being evicted from their homes. Rather than providing “experts” to give people advice about what to do – they set up Welcome Assemblies – where people that had faced eviction could teach others how they might respond.
Through conversation, the space helped people see the public pressures in their private lives – and recognise that they were not “failures” for facing eviction, but that the source of their pressure was public and financial failure. That space created the conditions for building one of the most successful and long lasting housing movements in recent memory.
This story is captured in the second half of this podcast episode and was compiled from interviews with activists and tenants in Barcelona – undertaking by Amanda in 2017.
