Depois de Berlim,
agora é Nova Iorque que pondera proíbir e banir a AIRBNB...
Será que Fernando
Medina lê estes artigos? Ele não só não impõe qualquer tipo de
limites ou restrições/condições à AIRBNB, mas é oficialmente o
seu principal aliado, desempenhando assim o papel, não de Alcaide
cioso e defensor da sua cidade, mas pelo contrário de principal
Vendilhão da mesma.
OVOODOCORVO
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Berlin
is right to clamp down on Airbnb. London should do the same
Airbnb
has become a platform for professional landlords, buy-to-let
investors and property management companies. So much for the 'sharing
economy' in London.
Kirsty Major
@Kirsty_Maj0r Tuesday 17 May 2016
Sharing is caring,
they say – unless, that is, you are a professional Airbnb landlord.
Then your participation in the so called “sharing economy”
actually involves hoarding scarce housing stock for your own profit
and pulling a fast one on anyone unfortunate enough to live in a
popular tourist destination.
Airbnb was founded
on the idea that home owners could host guests in their spare rooms –
or even their entire home, if they happened to be away on holiday –
in exchange for a small fee. True to the spirit of the socio-economic
ecosystem known as the ‘sharing economy’, idle resources would be
shared out with little financial return and emotional connections
between people forged. The company claims that their hosts would
“create a sense of belonging around the world”; wherever you
stay, you’re at home
Maybe the San
Francisco sun went to their head in Silicon Valley, because over here
in Europe the reality of hosting through the site looks very
different.
Rather than
facilitating peer-to-peer sharing, Airbnb has become a platform for
professional landlords and buy-to-let investors. Renting entire flats
to tourists through the site has become highly profitable industry in
its own right, and it has become so widespread that it’s now having
a detrimental impact on the availability of housing for first-time
buyers and renters in major European cities.
Berlin, long touted
by experts as a sort of nirvana of housing law, has responded to the
city’s growing housing shortage by banning the short-term leasing
of entire flats. The 20,000 ‘guest-flats’ in the German capital
are anticipated to supply one years’ worth of housing stock.
However, Berlin has
nothing on the UK’s capital when it comes to professional Airbnb
use.
According to Inside
Airbnb, in Berlin’s most popular district, Charlottenburg, 60 per
cent of listings are entire homes, 80 per cent are available year
round and 33.8 per cent of users list multiple properties. In
London’s most desired location, the City of London, 86.1 per cent
of listings are entire properties, 58.4 per cent of listings are
available year round and 59.3 per cent have multiple properties.
Across the city, 45
per cent of properties are being rented out for more than 90 days –
the legal limit in the UK without permission. Far from individuals
sharing their homes, nearly half of the listings on site are
unregistered hotels.
According to Airbnb,
the typical London host earns only £3,500 by sharing their space for
50 nights a year, and last year the business generated £1.3bn in
economic activity in the capital. A spokesperson said: “We want to
be good partners to the city and will continue working with
policymakers on innovative measures to promote responsible home
sharing.”
But the data is
clear: the use of Airbnb to operate short-term rentals is removing
housing stock for regular Londoners. Rather than tightening the law,
the rules around the sharing economy have been loosened since 2015.
Sections 44 and 45
of the Deregulation Act 2015 relaxed existing housing law and allowed
home owners in London to “participate in the sharing economy, and
enjoy the same freedom and flexibility as the rest of the country to
temporarily let their homes, without the disproportionate burden of
requiring planning permission”. This meant that no permission is
required for short term lets used for less than 90 days per year.
The act attempts to
bring extra resources into the economy while protecting housing
stock, but the former has been prioritised over the latter, by
failing to provide local authorities with the ability to enforce the
90 day limit.
Writing for the
digital magazine Vice, investigative journalist Corin Faife posed as
a homeowner with a flat to rent and asked a third party Airbnb
management service (yes, they exist too) about the legality of
letting a property full time; he was told that the laws were
“unenforceable”.
Far from
facilitating a purer form of capitalism – peer-to-peer sharing –
the tech start up has instead created a three-headed hydra: Airbnb
management companies look after properties rented by professional
landlords who advertise their goods through the site. There is more
human contact at your local Premier Inn.
London Mayor Sadiq
Khan could do with following Berlin’s example by responding to the
reality of the misnamed ‘sharing economy’ into London’s housing
strategy.
Airbnb could still
have a role in the city, but like Berlin we could limit the amount of
space permitted to let to less than 50 per cent of homes. This would
stay true to the company’s ethos of allowing Londoners to share
their homes, and welcome guests to their city.
And the Government
could ask the site to share its extensive data to identify those
abusing the 90 day limit and provide extra resources to local
authorities to tackle these rogue lan
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New
York could ban Airbnb users hiring out apartments
New
York State Governor Andrew Cuomo to have final say on bill to ban ads
for short-term rentals
Harry
Cockburn
New York State may
soon make it illegal to advertise wholly unoccupied apartments for
short-term rentals on Airbnb.
The bill was
approved on Friday by New York State, and a final decision will now
be made by Governor Andrew Cuomo, who will sign it off, veto it, or
even let it become law without his signature.
If it becomes law,
the bill will prohibit advertising online listings for unoccupied
apartments that last less than 30 days. New York already prohibits
such rentals if residents are not present, but advertising them was
not explicitly barred.
The law is designed
to prevent commercial firms buying up apartments and turning them
into Airbnb hotels.
Under the
legislation first-time offenders would be fined $1,000, but repeat
offenders will be fined $7,500.
“Let's be clear:
this is a bad proposal that will make it harder for thousands of New
Yorkers to pay the bills,” Airbnb's Josh Meltzer told TechCrunch.
“Dozens of governments around the world have demonstrated that
there is a sensible way to regulate home sharing and we hope New York
will follow their lead and protect the middle class.”
Actor Ashton
Kutcher, an Airbnb investor, tweeted: “People are going to lose
their homes because of this ignorant bill!”
New York is one of
Airbnb’s biggest markets, and the company, which was founded in
2008 is now valued at $25bn (£17bn) and estimates it contributes
around $60m in taxes to the state of New York.
In November the
company spent $8m fighting a similar legal ruling aimed at short term
rentals in San Francisco.
But the State
Assembly’s Linda Rosenthal, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the
bill is aimed at targeting “people or companies with multiple
listings”.
Speaking to the New
York Post she said: “There are so many units held by commercial
operators, not individual tenants. They are bad actors who horde
multiple units, driving up the cost of housing around them and across
the city.”
She added: “You
should know who your neighbour is and what happens when people rent
out their apartments on Airbnb is you get strangers. Every night
there could be different person sleeping in the next apartment and it
shatters that sense of community in the building. It also can be
dangerous.”
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