Barcelona to ban apartment rentals to tourists in bid to cut housing costs

 

Barcelona to ban apartment rentals to tourists in bid to cut housing costs

 

Spanish city is one of Europe’s top destinations but its popularity has made housing increasingly unaffordable for residents

 

Guardian staff and agencies

Sat 22 Jun 2024 02.01 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/22/barcelona-to-ban-apartment-rentals-to-tourists-in-bid-to-cut-housing-costs

 

Barcelona, a top Spanish holiday destination, has announced it will bar apartment rentals to tourists by 2028, an unexpectedly drastic move as it seeks to rein in soaring housing costs and make the city livable for residents.

 

The city’s leftist mayor, Jaume Collboni, said on Friday that by November 2028, Barcelona would scrap the licences of the 10,101 apartments currently approved as short-term rentals.

 

“We are confronting what we believe is Barcelona’s largest problem,” Collboni told a city government event. This meant that “from 2029”, if there were no setbacks, “tourist flats as we conceive of them today will disappear from the city of Barcelona”.

 

The boom in short-term rentals in Barcelona, Spain’s most visited city by foreign tourists, meant some residents could not afford an apartment after rents rose 68% in the past 10 years and the cost of buying a house rose by 38%, Collboni said. Access to housing had become a driver of inequality, particularly for young people, he added.

 

National governments relish the economic benefits of tourism – Spain ranks among the top-three most visited countries in the world – but with local residents priced out in some places, gentrification and owner preference for lucrative tourist rentals are increasingly a hot topic across Europe.

 

Local governments have announced restrictions on short-term rentals in places such as Spain’s Canary Islands, Lisbon and Berlin in the past decade.

 

Spain’s Socialist housing minister, Isabel Rodriguez, said she supported Barcelona’s decision.

 

“It’s about making all the necessary efforts to guarantee access to affordable housing,” she posted on X.

 

Vacation rentals platform Airbnb, which hosts a significant number of Barcelona listings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

“Collboni is making a mistake that will lead to [higher] poverty and unemployment,” Barcelona’s tourist apartments association Apartur said in a statement, adding the ban would trigger a rise in illegal tourist apartments.

 

Hotels stand to benefit from the move. The opening of new hotels in the city’s most popular areas was banned by a far-left party governing Barcelona between 2015 and 2023, but Collboni has signalled he could relax the restriction.

 

Barcelona’s hotel association declined to comment on Friday’s announcement.

 

“Those 10,000 apartments will be used by the city’s residents or will go on the market for rent or sale,” Collboni said of the measure.

 

Barcelona’s local government said in a statement it would maintain its “strong” inspection regime to detect potential illegal tourist apartments once the ban came into force.

 

No new tourist apartments have been allowed in the city in recent years. The local government had ordered the shutting of 9,700 illegal tourist apartments since 2016 and close to 3,500 apartments had been recovered to be used as primary housing for local residents, it said.

 

But that has not prevented the number of visitors to the city – known for its belle epoque architecture, museums and beaches – from continuing to increase, especially after Covid pandemic travel restrictions were lifted.

 

Several local associations have called for a demonstration on 6 July with the slogan: “Enough! Let’s put a stop to tourism!”

 

The rally will come on the heels of similar demonstrations held in recent months in other Spanish tourism hotspots such as the Canary Islands and Palma de Mallorca.

 

Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report