Half Your Salary on Rent

Simona works full-time at a Kirchberg supermarket. Before that, she cleaned offices for two years. The money has always been tight, but it worked, until her landlady reclaimed the apartment. She invoked personal use, and Simona has to leave. She has been looking for a new place. Agencies hang up when she says she is a single mother. Private landlords pick the higher earner, or the couple who can split the cost. She has considered taking a second job, not for the money, but to look like a better candidate on paper. No landlord gives her a chance.[1]

Her 16-year-old son is quietly considering a part-time job to ease the pressure at home. She will not allow it. "That is not his job," she says.

The unskilled minimum wage in Luxembourg is 2,703.74 euro gross, roughly 2,500 net. A one-bedroom apartment cost between 1,200 and 1,500 euro in 2020. Simona pays 1,400 today. The same money now more commonly buys a furnished room in a shared flat. With a 16-year-old son, that is not an option.

José sleeps in a bunk bed with his 14-year-old daughter. She on top, he below. She does her homework on something resembling a stool. The kitchen and bathroom are shared. A year in a furnished room that was supposed to be a stopgap. He has been in Luxembourg for ten years, working steadily in hospitality and construction, always on the minimum wage. Everything was manageable until he became a single parent. He has contacted the social welfare office for the first time.[2]

Mamadou, his partner, their two children aged two and seven, with a third on the way. Four years on the social housing waiting list. Still in a furnished room. Things are better than they were, he says, reaching for something positive. There is a small kitchen now. The family has its own toilet.

The market filters them out

The social workers are blunt. Sofia André, a social coordinator at Luxembourg City's welfare office, says landlords and agencies routinely favor two-income households as a safeguard against one tenant losing work. Children are frequently unwelcome. The rental market has become a gauntlet of criteria that single parents are structurally unable to clear.[3]

Silvia Fernandes, a social worker of 14 years, describes the arithmetic: for some families, rent consumes half their salary. When something small goes wrong, a washing machine breaking down, they are suddenly in real difficulty, because that kind of expense is never budgeted for. There is no margin. There is never a margin.

When asked if raising the minimum wage would help, Mamadou says: "I do not feel that I earn too little." The others agree. Their salary is reasonable. It is only when it meets the housing market that things stop adding up. No matter what they earn, the market never gives them a chance. Not because they could not afford it if they saved harder, but because a deregulated, fiercely competitive rental market filters them out before they can even try.

Certain people are profiting

Jean-Michel Campanella, vice-president of Anasig, the social workers' association, is unequivocal: the core problem is housing. On the private market, it is the payslip that counts. Additional benefits are often disregarded. Those with the least are funneled toward furnished rooms. "Certain people are profiting from others' hardship," he says. Anasig is pushing for binding regulations, particularly on hygiene standards. Many who are caught in these situations do not dare report conditions, fearing they will lose the roof over their heads. Municipalities, he argues, must be held to greater account, above all on emergency accommodation.[4]

Meanwhile, the waiting lists for social housing move slowly because the housing often does not exist yet. "Some people can remain on waiting lists for years," says Fernandes. "They come with great expectations," adds André, "and we have to tell them we have no real solutions. Our hands are tied."

I wish that my children have a better life

That is what Mamadou says when asked about the future. Not a demand. Not a complaint. A wish. For three families, there is no immediate fix. The minimum wage is not too low. The rents are too high. The social housing does not exist yet. The agencies will not call back. And the market, which is supposed to allocate efficiently, allocates these people into furnished rooms with shared toilets and bunk beds for their children, and then tells them it is their own fault for not earning enough.