Overcrowding Becomes Chronic: Four People, One Bed

Overcrowding Becomes Chronic: Four People, One Bed

Sleeping in shifts is an old tactic making a comeback. Overcrowding—four people sharing a single bed in the same room—is no longer an isolated incident in big cities; it's now appearing on room rental signs in small towns. One participant sums it up in four words: 'Four and one bed.' The scene is unsettling because it highlights a larger problem: housing has become the bottleneck for everything else.

How Many People Fit in a 70 Square Meter Flat?

What used to be the domain of university students—renting a room—has become widespread. There are cases of six people in 70 square meters, with entire families crammed into flats never designed for such occupancy. The phenomenon no longer distinguishes between expensive neighborhoods and the outskirts: signs advertising 'room for rent, with kitchen and bathroom access' are multiplying beyond the capitals. The room, that last bastion of affordable rent, has become the star product in a market with no supply.

The Business of Renting Beds by Shifts

Here's the calculation circulating among the more imaginative landlords. A bunk bed is rented out for 200 euros a month. But if that same bed is offered in eight-hour shifts for 100 euros, three different tenants could occupy it in a day: the same piece of furniture would then yield 300 euros. A four-bedroom flat with four bunk beds each (16 beds total) would bring in 3,200 euros at 200 euros each. With the shift system, the figure would rise to 4,800 euros, housing 48 people instead of 16. The full breakdown, bed by bed and shift by shift, is a masterclass in overcrowding engineering.

Who Is to Blame for Overcrowding: The State, the Landlord, or Immigration Policy?

The diagnosis here splits into several currents. One argues the problem starts at the ground level: the state decides where, when, and how much is built, and has been deciding very little for years, strangling supply and driving up prices. Another points to illegal subletting: in 'patera' flats (slang for overcrowded housing), the property is sublet by rooms, sometimes by the tenants themselves, not the owner, while property rights are compromised and contracts are not honored. A third blames migratory pressure, with estimates of 500,000 people per year needing housing; countering this is the memory that Spaniards also shared flats in London or Switzerland after the 2010 crisis.

Hot bed, an old tactic, is re-entering real estate vocabulary without anyone batting an eye.

As long as housing supply—land, permits, new construction—is not increased, overcrowding is unlikely to decrease. With demographic and tourist pressure pushing in the same direction, everything suggests that beds will continue to rotate. No solution has yet stood the test of reality.