In the occupied Moroccan city of Ceuta, a distressing case has drawn attention to the housing struggles facing Moroccan families living under Spanish administration. Warda Boujmaa, the mother of a nine-member household that includes five minor children and a daughter with autism, is now just days away from a scheduled eviction set for October 14.
For months, Boujmaa has searched tirelessly for alternative housing after a three-month grace period granted by local authorities came to an end. Her efforts have repeatedly run into the same obstacle: landlords unwilling to rent to large families, compounded by a severe shortage of available apartments across the city. The scarcity disproportionately affects Moroccan households of modest means who have long called Ceuta home.
Boujmaa does receive a measure of social assistance toward her rent, support that should, in principle, ease her search. In practice, however, it has done little to offset the shortage of suitable listings in a rental market stretched thin. I am willing to accept any housing, even temporary shelter, to keep my children from becoming homeless, she said, in remarks that have circulated locally and that echo the anxiety felt by other families in comparable circumstances.
Her predicament is emblematic of a broader pattern facing Moroccan residents in the northern presidios under Spanish occupation, where access to housing remains one of the most pressing social challenges. Ceuta and Melilla, Moroccan cities under Spanish control, have long been flashpoints of migration and social tension that fall hardest on local populations of Moroccan origin, frequently pushed to the economic margins of the very territories where their families have lived for generations.
As the October 14 deadline approaches, the fate of this nine-person household hinges on administrative proceedings and on the uncertain prospect of finding appropriate housing in time. Her case, now drawing wider attention beyond her immediate circle, underscores a structural problem: large Moroccan families, some made more vulnerable by disability, left to navigate an indifferent and saturated rental market in a city whose Moroccan roots predate the Spanish occupation itself.
