Spain orders Airbnb to block nearly 66,000 holiday rental listings over rule violations
Spain orders Airbnb to block nearly 66,000 holiday rental listings over rule violations
apnews.com
Spain orders Airbnb to block nearly 66,000 holiday rental listings over rule violations
MADRID (AP) — Spain has ordered Airbnb to block more than 65,000 holiday listings on its platform for having violated rules, the Consumer Rights Ministry said Monday.
The ministry said that many of the 65,935 Airbnb listings it had ordered to be withdrawn did not include their license number or specify whether the owner was an individual or a company. Others listed numbers that didn’t match what authorities had.
Spain is grappling with a housing affordability crisis that has spurred government action against short-term rental companies.
I saw this headline and just assumed it was an anti-tourist thing, but I was wrong.
On a Monday morning, it's just nice to see that somewhere on this planet there are countries willing to take federal action to attack the hoarding and purposeful scarcity in housing created by a greedy few sons of bitches.
I expect housing scarcity to become the next problem that gets solved somewhere in the world while the US pretends it's unsolvable. (Not unlike homelessness and gun violence.)
AirBnB inflates housing prices, any regulation against it is pretty much always good for the locals
Only if you live somewhere people actually wanna go to :taps_head:
My city has a snitch email, which you can contact and ask if a certain rental place is licensed
Already used it on two apartments my landlord is renting out. Turns out only one of them was properly licensed
The Spanish prime minister-- Pedro Sanchez-- is a political animal. He managed to maul and contain the far-right in a snap election he called. He has also spurred the economy and is growing, because he integrated many migrants well into the labour force. And even baser is that his government is pro-Palestine. All he had done in the past years granted him the political and social capital to enact policies that might ruffle the feathers of monied and powerful interests.
I hope Sanchez's government will survive any politicking against his progressive policies. The housing crisis is happening across the developed world, and oligarchs will propagandise the public into believing that the crisis is unsolvable, because resolving this will eat their bottomline.
To solve that you need to antagonize NIMBYs so I'm not hopeful.
My neighborhood i rent in is really expensive. I'm well off but not well off enough to ever be able to afford a house here. Especially not now with a one year old kid. My rent is $3500 but the cheapest house here would be at least $10000 (all expenses considered) a month on a 30 year mortgage.
Most of the people that live in the single family homes here are old with no kids. Most families with kids here rent.
Every so often I see one of the homes get all it's landscaping cleaned up, the house painted and sometimes an extension added onto it. Those are all the Airbnb's. Just a house that sits there empty for 3/4 weeks.
The other ones get torn down and turned into what I'd call a "box" house. Basically that ugly style of house that takes up the entire plot of land but still is only meant for one family. These are bought by the inherited wealth families that have a couple kids and want to get out of the main city but still don't want to live in the deep car dependent suburbs.
All of this because housing is used as an investment vehicle. From large corporations to individuals in retirement.
I really wish we could treat it for what it is. Shelter.
You may be interested in Community Land Trusts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_land_trust
Agreed.
Yowza. I was fortunate to get my condo two years ago before this stuff accelerated to the point of hopelessness, and now that the US is having its credit downgraded, that was an even luckier thing to do.
How Britan almost solved the housing crisis
Thanks for this link. It's kind of amazing and I like it because it says what should be obvious to us all: public homes are a good idea.
There is no federal government in Spain, but yes, you are right. And by the way, housing scarcity has been the underlying problem to most economical divides and class discrimination since decades now.
Ope, yeah. Forgot that Spain is a monarchy, but by federal I just mean 'nationwide'. Thanks.
Spain's government is more federal than federal governments like the German one. Spain's Autonomous regions have way more leeway and freedom than regions in federal governments.
Well it is an anti-tourist thing in the sense that regulations on AirBnBs and the like are meant to close the "hotel license" loophole. Touristy places generally don't mind new short-term accommodation and give out licenses like candy, likewise small places with relaxed property markets, non-touristy places are much more restrictive because they don't want to tank their economy.
For grandma in a village renting out some rooms to visitors getting delisted will result in her going to the municipality, asking for a license, getting one, and putting the listing up again. For an investor buying up apartments in big cities to illegally use as a hotel because renting long-term has lower ROI, well, they won't get a hotel license, their listings are going to stay down. If you want to build only hotels and have no long-term accommodation may I suggest building a theme park somewhere.
Your downvotes make me wonder if I misunderstood your post, but you seem to be saying that Spain's Airbnb regulations make it harder for people to buy flats with the intention of using them as short-term holiday lets, while not really stopping people who just want to rent a room in their own house for short periods. Which does sound good to me, given that those empty rooms in grandma's house wouldn't otherwise be on the market.
So is your point that this is "anti-tourist" in the sense that it does make things more difficult for tourists, but that should be expected given that tourists are generally indifferent to the long term negative effects of tourism on a city?