Abdul Aallai and several members of the Sants Housing Group entered this Tuesday morning into the headquarters of Social Services on Numància street, in the Sants neighborhood, to denounce their family's housing situation and demand a meeting with the center's director. The protest occurred while the family, made up of five people, has remained rehoused for over a year in a shared apartment.
The family was evicted at the end of 2024 from the home where they resided on Sugranyes street. Afterwards, they were assigned emergency accommodation in the Sagrada Família neighborhood. Since then, they maintain that the conditions are not adequate for a dignified coexistence.
A room for five people
The collective's complaint states that the five family members sleep in a single room of the shared apartment. Three of them are minors, aged 1, 3, and 12. Abdul Aallai assures that the situation has been prolonged for months without a stable solution.
"My children have to sleep on the floor" - Abdul Aallai
The Sants Housing Group demands an urgent change of temporary accommodation, considering that the current resource does not allow the family to live in minimum conditions. It also denounces coexistence problems with other people with whom they share the flat and maintains that their complaints to Social Services have not been addressed.
Distance with the school and health problems
Another of the points that centers the protest is the distance between the current accommodation and the Sants school where the children are enrolled. The collective states that the minors make a 50-minute journey every day to get to class, a situation that complicates the family routine.
According to this same complaint, the stress derived from the rehousing would have aggravated Abdul Aallai's chronic health problems. The group also maintains that this type of temporary accommodation does not meet minimum habitability standards and adds that the apartment management company, Sociohabitatge, has accumulated complaints for neglect and insalubrity. Their demand is to obtain dignified rehousing.
Confronted versions between the family and the City Council
The City Council maintains that the family had already requested a transfer to Sants and assures that Social Services offered them accommodation in that district, although it was rejected. The council adds that it continues to monitor the case and that it will communicate an alternative when space becomes available.
Abdul Aallai denies that version and maintains that during all this time no alternative has been presented to them. The discrepancy between both parties occurs in a context of increased pressure on municipal emergency housing resources.
More people in temporary accommodations
The council points out that in recent years there has been a sustained growth in the number of people living in emergency temporary accommodation. At the close of 2025 there were 3,480 people housed in ATU resources, compared to the 3,170 registered at the beginning of that same year.
Municipal spending on these resources was 43 million euros in 2025 and 38 million in 2024. Furthermore, the City Council indicates that 71% of people housed in ATU remain in these resources for more than six months, a fact that reflects the difficulty in providing a quick solution to many residential emergency situations.
The protest on Numància street has once again brought to the forefront the situation of families who remain in temporary accommodations for long periods and the clash between neighborhood demands and the response capacity of municipal services.