OPINIÃO
Os efeitos da Turistificação de Lisboa
Cada vez mais gente e menos lisboetas. Câmara entrega a
gestão da habitação ao aluguer online de alojamento para férias
ANTÓNIO SÉRGIO
ROSA DE CARVALHO
23 de Novembro de
2016, 9:45
https://www.publico.pt/2016/11/23/local/opiniao/os-efeitos-da-turistificacao-de-lisboa-1752237
Fernando
Medina não acompanha a Imprensa
internacional. Se o fizesse, ter-se-ia apercebido de uma avalanche de notícias
na Imprensa local de Nova Iorque e de
várias cidades Europeias sobre os efeitos perversos conjugados e
interactivos da Turistificação desenfreada, da Globalização desmedida e da
Gentrificaçào galopante na vida quotidiana dos habitantes locais nestas
cidades.
Um clamor
profundo, uma agitação permanente de insatisfação e um desejo urgente e
imperativo de mudança, de regulamentos, de fiscalização e de liderança
por parte dos habitantes, ameaça traduzir-se em consequências políticas,
e faz acordar os autarcas.
Temos ouvido
sobre as situações em Barcelona e Berlim e das condições impostas à AIRBNB que
vão desde a proibição total na capital alemã até à imposição de um rigoroso
regulamento na cidade da Catalunha.
Numa longa luta
do Municipal com a Airbnb [aluguer de alojamento para férias], Nova Iorque quer
agora proibir o aluguer de alojamentos através da AIRBNB por um período
inferior a 30 dias. Medida destinada a proteger a cidade dos efeitos perversos
das estadias curtas / low cost do turismo barato, massificado, predador e
desinteressante. Densidade intensa de ocupação do espaço físico sem interesse
económico e mais valias financeiras, a não ser, para os estabelecimentos também
eles “predadores” do comércio tradicional, ou seja, “comes e bebes” e
“quinquilharia” pseudoturística em dezenas de lojas asiáticas e afins.
A 6 de Outubro, o
“Guardian” publicou um conjunto de três artigos sobre a interligação destes
temas, tendo um deles sido dedicado à relação de Amsterdão com a AIRBNB.
Embora Amsterdão
tenha imposto um regulamento claro à Airbnb, ocupação máxima de 60 dias por ano e o máximo de quatro
pessoas por edifício, os efeitos sociais de descaracterização dos bairros têm
sido devastadores. O investimento especulativo junto à forte subida do preço da
habitação (também no aluguer a “expats” do mundo empresarial ) está a expulsar
progressivamente os habitantes locais,
transformando os bairros em plataformas rotativas e contínuas de “idas e
vindas” de forasteiros híper individualizados e indiferentes aos locais, e a
transformar os antigos bairros em locais alienados onde ninguém se conhece e
onde reina o anonimato.
Amsterdão
tem fiscalizado intensamente a ocupação
através da Airbnb mas é confrontada com
a recusa pela própria Airbnb de fornecimento de dados. Num espaço limitado
fisicamente como a pitoresca Amsterdão, a invasão turística low-cost / aluguer
Airbnb, está a levar a efeitos explosivos no trânsito, no comércio local onde
polulam as lojas de vocação turística e de souvenirs e está a provocar uma
avalanche de insatisfação traduzida em irritação ou animosidade explícita para
com o turismo.
De tal forma que, muito recentemente, a
autarquia fez um discurso explícito inteiramente dedicado a estes temas, onde
anunciou uma atitude de exigência e fiscalização ainda mais rigorosa para com a
Airbnb, medidas legislativas em conjunto com Haia que tornem possível a escolha
do tipo de lojas a instalar em cada rua e uma atitude nítida de selecção do
tipo de turismo, numa definição e
escolha dirigida à clara diferenciação entre o turismo desejável e indesejável.
Numa entrevista
publicada a 18 de Janeiro no PÚBLICO, o Director Ibérico da Airbnb anunciava
orgulhoso: “A evolução em 2015 face ao ano anterior foi de 65%. Portugal está
no 11.º lugar mundial em termos de anúncios na Airbnb, num ranking liderado
pelos EUA. A Airbnb captou um milhão de pessoas em 2015.”
Orgulhoso, e
claro, satisfeito. A Airbnb não está sujeita a qualquer tipo de regulamento,
exigência ou fiscalização em Portugal. Mais. A AIRBNB colabora com a Autarquia
e o Governo, de forma a que os impostos sejam cobrados ao Alojamento Local.
Estes aumentaram.
Mas os efeitos
devastadores são ignorados ou mesmo negados por Fernando Medina que se tem
mostrado irónico ou furtivo sobre estes problemas fundamentais para o presente
e o futuro estratégico da cidade de Lisboa.
Que este se torne
o tema fundamental de discussão de todas as forças políticas em direcção às
eleições autárquicas, é um imperativo. Não se trata de cor política, mas de um
tema Universal de Ecologia Urbana e de equilíbrio salutar no organismo vivo que
constitui uma verdadeira cidade.
A Turistificação
desenfreada, a Globalização desmedida e a Gentrificaçào galopante estão a matar
as cidades.
Are
Airbnb investors destroying Europe’s cultural capitals?
Historic cities are being transformed by lucrative
short-term rentals
Aleksandra
Wisniewska SEPTEMBER 5 2019
https://www.ft.com/content/2fe06a7c-cb2a-11e9-af46-b09e8bfe60c0
Bruno Romão
owns one of the last traditional coffee shops in Alfama, Lisbon’s historic
district with its maze of narrow cobbled streets and intricate tiled
façades.
“All the
others are now restaurants,” says one of the regulars in his café. Tourists
want restaurants, she says, not just traditional Portuguese coffee.
So Romão
has had to adapt. He recently opened a little dining space in a side room of
his shop for holidaymakers looking for a place to eat. “I haven’t changed the
place in 20 years,” he says as he surveys the tired-looking interior. “But I
have changed the menu.”
Romão used
to live close to his café, but after his divorce he moved out of Alfama. For
him and for many citizens property prices have outpaced incomes.
Since the
1980s, Alfama’s population has shrunk from 20,000 to around 1,000 today,
according to Luís Mendes, a geographer from the University of Lisbon and board
member of the Lisbon Tenants Association. More than 55 per cent of Alfama’s
apartments are short-term rentals, he says, often let through sites such as
Airbnb.
The rise of
short-term lets has affected cities across southern Europe, and has been blamed
for driving up property prices and hollowing out economies in some of the
world’s cultural capitals by promoting tourism above all else.
But
platforms such as Airbnb and HomeAway have brought significant
international investment to countries that, since 2012, have been recovering
from the eurozone crisis. Airbnb claims it has created new economic
opportunities for millions of Europeans and, by its own count, added $100bn to
the global economy last year. Many private investors have bought and renovated
historic properties that were previously at risk of dilapidation as Airbnb
investments.
So, is the
rise of short-term rental platforms destroying Europe’s cultural centres or
helping to save them?
Lisbon
In
Portugal’s capital, Mendes says the government was slow to react. “Airbnb grew
and developed without restriction,” he says. “While San Francisco was imposing
quotas, Lisbon was doing nothing.”
Mendes
describes what happened in Lisbon as a “perfect storm”. The economic crisis,
which hit southern European cities particularly hard, left the city with a 20
per cent decline in property prices per sq m between 2008 and 2013, and an
unemployment rate of 17.5 per cent in 2013.
Coupled
with low global interest rates, the increasing availability of cheap flights
and Lisbon’s rising popularity as a holiday destination — Portugal saw
double-digit growth in tourist numbers every year between 2014 and 2017 — the
proliferation of properties listed on platforms such as Airbnb was
inevitable.
Added to
that, rental law reform in 2012 gave landlords freedom to end years-long
contracts at below-market values and replace them with short-term ones.
The result,
Mendes says, was that the availability of long-term rentals in Lisbon decreased
by 70 per cent over the past five years, pushing many local residents like
Romão to the suburbs or further out, back to the towns where they were born and
which they had left decades before in search of a more prosperous life in the capital.
Meanwhile,
property prices have grown rapidly in the past five years, with a 12 per cent
increase in the past 12 months alone, according to Marta Costa, head of
research at Cushman & Wakefield’s division in Portugal.
Today,
prices of new apartments in Lisbon average €6,500 per sq m, and can reach
€7,700 per sq m in some of the most sought-after areas in the historic centre.
Growth may be cooling off, however, Costa says. “We are at maximum historic
value and the potential for increase isn’t as strong.”
Barcelona
The Spanish
city has led the way in regulation among Mediterranean countries, in an attempt
to rein in the Airbnb backlash — locals have protested about rising prices and
antisocial behaviour by guests. In Barcelona, the ratio of tourists to
residents is five to one, compared with nine to one in Lisbon, according to the
Institute for Tourism Planning and Development. “As soon as town halls around
Europe realised Airbnb was a double-edged sword, they set off to work out legal
frameworks to push back,” says Fabiola Mancinelli, anthropologist at the
University of Barcelona.
She says
that in Barcelona and other Mediterranean cities, gentrification happens
alongside “touristification”: long-term residents are replaced by temporary
ones. “It takes away the soul of the place and the social tissue that makes
that place alive,” she adds.
As a
resident of Barcelona’s historic centre, she was shocked how much the rise of
short-term lets affected local families. “My two daughters go to a local
school,” she says, “but long-term residents don’t want to send their children
there because of high turnover — every time a long-term contract expires and
families move away — my daughters lose friends.”
Florence
One in five
properties in the historic centre is advertised as a short-term rental, according
to researchers at the University of Siena, a 60 per cent growth since 2015. It
is the highest concentration in Italy, more than Rome (12 per cent) and Venice
(11.8 per cent).
For Diletta
Giorgolo this is good news. “Airbnb has had a positive impact on the market in
Italy as there is now a greater incentive for foreign investors to buy
properties in Florence as they know there is a good return on investment
through rental yields,” says the head of sales at Sotheby’s International
Realty for central and southern Italy.
Short-term
rentals in the city are seen as providing “a good steady flow of income
throughout the year”, she adds.
Higher
rents, however, have left local residents with little option but to move out to
the suburbs. According to estimates by Sunia, the Florence branch of the
national union of tenants, 1,000 Florentines leave the historic centre every
year. They are priced out or evicted by landlords who are seeking more
lucrative rental options, according to the organisation.
Athens
Noise, a
carefree attitude to rubbish and general lack of care shown by the tourists
make headlines. Lawsuits by affected neighbours pile in.
In April, a
court in Thessaloniki banned a host from letting out her apartment on a
short-term basis after a complaint was lodged by residents of the building
where tourists held late-night parties and made the place feel unsafe.
“It comes
down to urban etiquette,” says Iason Athanasiadis who rents out his apartments
on Airbnb while travelling between his homes in Athens, Istanbul and Tunis. His
way of keeping the balance is to limit the number of guests to three and
keeping in touch with the neighbours. “It’s just as important that the guests
should behave as [the hosts] making money out of their stay,” he says.
He
appreciates that the ethics of short-term rental platforms are not clear-cut.
He is against investing purely for profit but argues the arrival of Airbnb was
good for the city’s rundown inner districts, which saw violent demonstrations
during the darkest days of the economic crisis. “Many Greeks at that time
didn’t want to live in the centre — there was a stigma attached to it,” he
says.
In the
early 2010s, as thousands of Athenians lost their jobs and were unable to pay
their mortgages, many saw Airbnb as an opportunity to save their properties,
especially in the face of higher taxes, says Ares Kalandides, professor of
place management at Manchester Metropolitan University.
However,
about two years ago he noticed a change. “International investors moved in and
started buying over-debted apartments from the Greeks,” he says, adding that
the market had morphed from distributed ownership to a handful of investors
with 100 or even 1,000 units in Athens.
Airbnb
rejects his figures. “There is no host in Athens with 1,000 listings,” says the
company. It calculates that 83 per cent of host accounts in Athens have only
one entire-home listing.
“We take
local concerns seriously and want to continue working with everyone to ensure
home sharing continues to grow responsibly and sustainably, like we already
have with more than 500 governments and organisations around the world,” it
adds.
Back in
Portugal, the rules around short-term rentals are changing. At the end of last
year, regulatory powers were devolved to municipalities, so that areas of
central Lisbon and Porto need not enforce the same rules as resorts in the
Algarve. The number of licences for short-term accommodation in Lisbon was
capped in seven of the city’s 24 neighbourhoods — those most affected by the
influx of foreign visitors, says Mendes.
The
prospect of these regulations loom large for investors such as Gail and Miles
Curley from the UK, who own five apartments in Lisbon’s Avenida da Liberdade
that they rent out on a short-term basis through platforms such as Airbnb,
TripAdvisor and Booking.com.
If the city
were to follow the example of Paris and cap the number of days a year for which
the flats can be rented, the Curleys would have to stop. “It immediately kills
the business rationale,” says Miles, a former City lawyer who first came to
Lisbon in 2001.
The couple
made their first investment in 2011, when he says Avenida da Liberdade was
largely deserted and derelict. They struggled to rent out their homes for a
year before they decided short-term rental was the way to go, joining many
other property buyers who rode the wave of the 2012 rental reform that unfroze
rents, allowing services like Airbnb and Booking.com to expand.
“There’s
been perhaps an excessive boom with people coming and investing but the
flipside is that the city got a real facelift,” says Curley, echoing those who
see the expansion as a turning point for the local economy.
The
post-crisis injection of foreign investment helped redress the crumbling heart
of the capital. Today, Avenida da Liberdade is referred to by some as the
Champs-Elysées of Lisbon. In the waterfront neighbourhoods of Alfama and Baixa,
the colourful town houses were renovated and “given a second life”, according
to Luís Araújo, president of Turismo de Portugal.
“Airbnb is
an answer to a demand from tourists,” says Araújo. “Not having an answer is not
being a competitive destination,” he adds. Araújo’s office is working on an
ambitious plan for 2027, hoping to increase overnight stays by 60 per cent to
80m.
“We see it
[the rise of Airbnb] as a positive contribution to our tourism and recovery of
the cities and for the owners of local lodging,” he says.
Maria
Leonor Rolo Duarte, president of Citizenship Academy that advocates active
citizenship and sustainable development, disagrees. “You can’t have growth that
never ends,” she says. “It’s like medicine: if you take too much, it’s not good
for you.” As a member of the wider campaign platform Morar em Lisboa (Living in
Lisbon), she advocates imposing limits and introducing regulation on short-term
rental platforms to strike a better balance between the needs of tourists and
priced-out locals.
For Eduardo
Miranda, president of the Association for Local Accommodation in Portugal
(ALEP), everything comes down to “smart management”. He says that 60 per cent
of what are now Airbnb rentals in Lisbon stood empty before renovation.
In his
view, the historic centre stopped catering to locals’ needs a long time ago.
Some 92 per cent of buildings have no lifts, there are few parking spaces and
no local schools, he says. “An average house in Alfama is 30 sq m — this is not
a house for a family.”
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