The key facts

  • The rent for 94-year-old Franca's apartment will rise from €450 to €1,200 a month; the contract expires in February
  • Her daughter is ready to help with a small increase but calls the new amount unaffordable; the family turned to the Sunia union
  • In 2025, 2,427 eviction rulings were issued in Tuscany, with about 35% of enforcement applications coming from Florence

Pensioner faces eviction from the home where she has lived for more than 60 years

94-year-old Franca risks losing her 70-square-metre apartment in Florence, where she has lived since the early 1960s. Her rental contract expires in February and, according to her family, she will not be able to afford a renewal on the new terms: the owner is demanding €1,200 a month instead of the previous €450. This was reported by Euronews, citing Corriere Fiorentino.

The family on the consequences of the increase

Franca's daughter, who asked not to be named because she has not yet decided whether to tell her mother about the situation, told the publication that the woman receives a minimum pension and a survivor's pension from her late husband. "If she has to pay €1,200 in rent, she will have practically nothing left to live on, not even for food," she said. According to her, the contract was renewed every two years, and the family was informed of the non-renewal and the new rent amount by phone. The daughter added that the family is not demanding the rent stay the same forever and is ready to help her mother with a small increase, but calls the jump from €450 to €1,200 an unaffordable sum; she was also upset by the lack of any opportunity for negotiation or finding a compromise.

The building and the new managers

All the apartments in the building belong to a single owner. Previously, it was mostly Florentine families living there, many for generations, but over time the tenants changed. As far as the daughter knows, the apartments are not being converted into tourist rentals and remain ordinary long-term leases, but in her view, the new management company is seeking a much higher return. The apartment where Franca lived with her husband and where her daughter was born is filled with photographs of grandchildren, paintings of Florentine streets and mementoes from her daughter's wedding; the family calls it the only home the woman considers truly her own.

Parallel with the Maricarmen case and the Tuscan context

Euronews notes that the case echoes the story of 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal (Maricarmen), who became a symbol of the fight for the right to housing in Spain after a sharp rise in rents and her eviction in Madrid; she died in hospital a few days after the eviction, and her story sparked mass protests. Franca's case comes against the backdrop of rising evictions in Tuscany: in 2025, 2,427 eviction rulings were issued in the region, with Florence accounting for about 35% of all applications for their enforcement. Franca's daughter sought help from the tenants' union Sunia. Sunia Toscana general secretary Fabio Seggiani told Euronews that Interior Ministry data do not take into account the 30% growth in short-term and temporary rentals in Tuscany over the same period. "After job insecurity, we are now facing real housing insecurity. And it is always the most vulnerable groups who have to pay for it," he said.