Foreclosure and Health in Southern Europe: Results from the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages

Abstract

Housing instability has been shown to be related to poorer health outcomes in various studies, mainly in the USA and UK. Affected individuals are more prone to psychiatric (e.g., major depression, anxiety) and physical disorders (e.g., hypertension). This situation has deteriorated with the onset of the economic crisis. One of the most affected countries is Spain, which has high rates of foreclosure and eviction that continue to rise. In response, a civil movement, The Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH), works to provide solutions to its members affected by foreclosure and advocates for the right to decent housing. The aims of this study ware to describe and compare the health status of PAH members from Catalonia to a sample of the general population and to analyze the association between health status and mortgage status, foreclosure stage, and other socioeconomic variables, among members of the PAH. We conducted a cross-sectional study using a self-administered online questionnaire (2014) administered to 905 PAH members in Catalonia (918 years; 559 women and 346 men). Results were compared with health indicators from The Health Survey of Catalonia 2013 (n = 4830). The dependent variables were poor mental health (GHQ 12 ≥ 3), and poor self-reported health (fair or poor). All analyses were stratified by sex. We computed age-standardized prevalence and prevalence ratios of poor mental and self-reported health in both samples. We also analyzed health outcomes among PAH members according to mortgage status (mortgage holders or guarantors), stage of foreclosure, and other socioeconomic variables by computing prevalence ratios from robust Poisson regression models. The prevalence of poor mental health among PAH members was 90.6 % in women and 84.4 % in men, and 15.5 and 10.2 % in the general population, respectively. The prevalence of poor self-reported health was 55.6 % in women and 39.4 % in men from the PAH, and 19.2 and 16.1 % in the general population, respectively. These health inequalities were independent of socioeconomic status. The prevalence of poor mental health was higher among individuals in the non-payment stage of foreclosure than among those who were up to date with their payments (e.g., PR c = 1.16 [95 % CI 1.04-1.28]). In contrast, selfreported poor health was more prominent in later stages of foreclosure, such as in posteviction without dation in payment stage in men (PR c = 2.24 [95 %CI = 1.35-3.72]). We observed a considerably higher prevalence of poor mental and self-reported health among male and female PAH members than in the general population. Public policies that tackle housing instability and its consequences are urgently needed in Spain.

Contesting Actually Existing Austerity

“…The housing crisis has been at the centre of the broader crisis in Spanish political economy since 2008 with foreclosures, repossessions and evictions being some of the main ways in which the crisis has hit many Spanish people (Cano Fuentes et al 2013, Barbero 2015, Vásquez-Vera et al 2016. Moreover, Spanish growth preceding the crisis was largely driven by increasing house prices (López andRodríguez 2010, Charnock et al 2014).…”

“…The paper focuses on Spanish housing because the anti-eviction housing movement Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH, Platform for the Mortgage-Affected) has been one of the most sustained and well-known cases of contestation of austerity in Europe throughout the post-2008 period, with scholars across the social sciences exploring different aspects of the PAH and its campaigns (Álvarez de Andrés et al 2015, Flesher Fominaya 2015, Nuijten 2015, Ordóñez et al 2015, de Weerdt and García 2016, Vásquez-Vera et al 2016. It therefore follows Huke et al (2015) to some extent in understanding the political economy by exploring how it is contested and disrupted.…”

Crisis de la vivienda, movimientos sociales y empoderamiento: una revisión sistemática de la literatura

“…En el análisis de la calidad de vida de personas afectadas por la crisis hipotecaria se observa una clara afectación negativa sobre su salud (Ballester et al, 2015;Vásquez-Vera et al, 2016). Para tratar el tema de la salud, se aboga por crear comunidad y trabajar de manera cooperada apuntando a la importancia del apoyo psicosocial de las personas afectadas (Arredondo y De las Olas, 2013).…”

Strengthening mental health systems to respond to economic crises

“…Spain has also had high levels of mortgage arrears and evictions since the economic crisis. One study in Catalonia found that 90% of women and 84% of men in mortgage arrears and threatened with eviction had poor mental health compared with rates of 15% and 10% in the general population (30). A Swedish study linking data on 23,000 court imposed rental evictions found that they were four times more likely to complete suicide than the general population (31).…”