Sisters commit suicide before being evicted from their apartment

SPAIN.- Two sisters, aged 64 and 54, They committed suicide by jumping into the void from a window of his home in Barcelona hours before they were evicted from their home by order of a judge, following the request of the owner and following two years of not paying the rent.

The two women They stopped paying rent in 2021just when his mother passed away After contracting Covid, the neighbors consider that the pensioner She was the only one with income at home.

The case was unknown to the housing aid NGOs, with which They never got in touchbut also for the people in the neighborhood, since the sisters did not seem to have shared with anyone the situation that led them to end their own lives.

Nuria, The eldest of the two was the only one who went out from home, to run errands and go shopping, and also the only one who had a name for the neighbors, since the youngest had “not gone out for years,” they say.

“The news took us by surprise because we did not expect it or imagine that they were in that situation,” said a neighbor.

The woman claimed that the two sisters “They didn’t have much neighborhood life“and he only knew the eldest, with whom he occasionally had informal chats in the hallway and little else because “he hardly ever left the house.”

An unknown case in the neighborhood

The municipal housing services did not make a vulnerability report because during their visits “They were never able to contact anyone“nor were the messages left answered.”

On Monday, City Council specialists went to provide psychological support to the residents.

“I knew Núria. Although It’s been a while since I cameI used to shop at the deli once a month and we would chat. The mother’s thing affected himhe always wore a mask and asked me to keep a certain distance,” said the owner of a delicatessen a few meters from the building.

The delicatessen owner regretted that the high rent in the Sant Andreu area has caused many of her clients to “leave the neighbourhood”.

Elderly man commits suicide for not being able to pay rent

This is the second known case of suicide due to eviction in the Spanish region of Catalonia in 2024, an outcome that housing protection organisations have been well aware of for more than a decade.

Before these sisters, Alex, a 70-year-old resident of the city of Sabadell, took his own life. After thirty years living in the same house, he had been evicted.

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