Paris leads efforts to puncture Airbnb
Airbnb follows in Uber’s footsteps as the platform big
cities love to regulate, with Paris cracking down the hardest.
By ZACHARY
YOUNG 8/27/18, 5:52 PM CET
Updated 8/31/18, 8:30 AM CET
Paris' actions may hit a special nerve for Airbnb |
PARIS — French lawmakers are taking the air out of Airbnb.
Paris officials are announcing record fines for serial
renters using the service as lawmakers near the adoption of a new law that
would make the American company liable for thousands of unregistered listings
on its site. The stakes are high: France is the world’s most-visited country,
and Paris is reportedly Airbnb’s single-biggest city market worldwide.
Last week Ian Brossat, who’s in charge of housing at Paris’
city hall, said that fines this year for illegal online rentals have already
reached €1.38 million, surpassing the total for all of 2017. Brossat told POLITICO
that such rentals diminish the city’s housing stock, drive up rents, and can
transform residential communities into tourist traps.
The Paris crackdown coincides with broader efforts to rein
in unregulated peer-to-peer renting on one of the sharing economy’s star
platforms. Barcelona is building a 100-man enforcement squad to track down
unregistered Airbnb hosts, and fined the site itself €600,000 last year.
Berlin, which all but banned the service in 2016, reopened its market in March
with a 90-day annual cap on short-term rentals.
The ELAN bill would introduce fines for platforms that fail
to remove unregistered listings from their site.
In New York City, officials approved on August 6 disclosure
requirements for Airbnb to beef up its enforcement of a state law that bans
rentals of less than 30 days, spurring the site to sue the city on Friday.
Registration requirements introduced in San Francisco this year have reportedly
dropped the number of listings by close to half.
Yet Paris’ actions may hit a special nerve for Airbnb. Its
spokesperson Aurelien Perol told Global News in April: “We remain disappointed
that we aren’t so far able to collaborate with city authorities as effectively
as we are in other major European cities, including Berlin, Barcelona and
London.”
Regulatory tug-of-war
The trouble for Airbnb stems from French rules that forbid
residents from subletting their property for more than 120 nights per year and
requires them to get the written consent of landlords. To shore up enforcement
of such rules, the city hall passed a measure in October 2016 requiring Airbnb
renters to secure a “registration number” for each listed property. The
deadline for compliance was December 1, 2017.
But by mid-January 2018, roughly 80 percent of the
platform’s listings had failed to do so, according to a study by Le Figaro.
Growing frustrated with the continued presence of unregistered listings on
Airbnb, the city hall filed suit in April against the platform and German rival
Wimdu.
“We must hold the platforms responsible,” said Brossat at
the time, contending that 84 percent of Airbnb’s listings were legally invalid.
“Airbnb today is fine with not respecting the law,” he added.
Fines this year for illegal online rentals have already
reached €1.38 million in Paris | Toshifumi Kitamure
The Paris official, who also leads France’s Communist list
of candidates for the 2019 European election, struck a similar tune this week
when revealing 2018’s record number of fines.
“Today, we are punishing the landlords, but we are not
touching Airbnb, which nonetheless makes money on these illegal listings.
That’s going to change,” he declared Wednesday to FranceInfo.
Airbnb representatives said the company favors regulation,
calling the 120-night threshold “a sensible rule.” But they said banning
unregistered listings is a “disproportionate” response that would hurt casual
renters. “This broken registration scheme will only preserve hotel lobbies’
interests while failing to address local concerns on housing,” a company
spokesperson said.
Airbnb is likely to face tougher measures due to the
so-called ELAN (Evolution of Housing, Development and the Internet) bill,
already passed by the French Senate. Currently under examination by a
House-Senate committee, the bill would introduce fines for platforms that fail
to remove unregistered listings from their site.
The Union for the Promotion of Vacation Rentals, an industry
group for Airbnb and similar services, opposes the law. Sources familiar with
the platforms’ strategy said it would create a “damned if you do, damned if you
don’t” scenario: Either face massive fines, or sacrifice the majority of
listings.
Those sources added that many infrequent renters — the type
city hall says it’s OK with — will be unlikely to go through an onerous registration
process since they only sublet a few nights per year. Additionally, they said
renters are likely to be dizzied by registration rules that vary from town to
town, or scared off by the prospect of thousand-euro fines.
Brossat disagreed. “Someone who is capable of placing a
listing on Airbnb is absolutely capable of recuperating his registration
number,” he said, promising the process only takes three minutes.
The platforms are now attempting to preempt the ELAN law,
saying they will automatically remove properties from their site once they have
been rented for 120 nights within a year.
Airbnb also said it has begun automatically collecting
tourism taxes this year for 23,000 French cities.
For Brossat and city hall, such self-regulation is too
little, too late.
“The platforms should have already been doing this in 2016,”
Brossat said. “Since the platforms give us no transparency on their data, we
must have means to verify they’re removing those listings effectively.”
This story has been updated with comment from Airbnb.
Madrid reduz alojamento local para travar "subidas
astronómicas" das rendas
Capital espanhola vai aplicar novas regras ao alojamento
local, limitando a oferta por causa dos efeitos na habitação.
PÚBLICO 17 de Agosto de 2018, 16:29
Autoridades locais dizem que aluguer a turistas tem afectado
o preço das casas, tornando-as mais caras
A cidade de Madrid quer mudar as regras do alojamento
turístico, impondo uma separação clara entre arrendamento temporário para
turistas (menos de três meses) e o arrendamento mais profissional de casas, ao
longo de todo o ano. A autarquia da capital espanhola diz que o alojamento
turístico desregrado causou um "aumento astronómico do preço dos
arrendamentos" no centro da cidade.
De acordo com o jornal espanhol El País, que teve acesso ao
projecto de lei – e que vai ainda ser debatido em Setembro – para arrendar
durante mais de três meses será preciso pedir uma licença para tal, sendo certo
que essa autorização não será atribuída às habitações localizadas em edifícios
no centro da cidade e em outras três áreas vizinhas, e que não tenham um acesso
independente do resto dos apartamentos.
Na prática, diz o jornal esta sexta-feira, isso irá afectar
cerca de 95% do mercado do que em Portugal é conhecido por alojamento local (e
que, no caso nacional, tem legislação desde 2008, recentemente revista também
com a possibilidade de restrições na freguesias mais pressionadas).
A câmara municipal, diz o El País, defende que não está a
querer eliminar este tipo de negócio, porque há uma oferta de habitações
inferior a três meses por ano, e o arrendamento de quartos também fica fora das
novas regras. O centro da cidade, dizem as autoridades locais, é de fácil
acesso de várias zonas, com quatro a cada cinco bairros a uma distância inferior
a meia hora de transportes públicos.
Numa visão contrária à que foi recentemente defendida pela
autoridade da concorrência espanhola, a CNMC, que não vê efeitos negativos
desta actividade nos preços do imobiliário, a autarquia diz que este tipo de
arrendamento a turistas, popularizado por plataformas electrónicas como o
Airbnb e a Homeaway, tem conduzido à “expulsão de residentes”, e afectado o
preço das casas, tornando-as mais caras.
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