11/06/2018
Share your thoughts on this.. agree or disagree?
This notice appeared recently in Venice, but it could easily have appeared in Florence as the situation is the same.
At the moment there is a housing crisis in Florence (as in Venice)... up to one in five properties in the historic centre of Florence is being rented out through Airbnb, turning the feted city into a “theme park for tourists” and there are numerous other short term rentals (at inflated rents) available.
The results of this fairly recent phenomenon are dramatic; hotels suffer, long term residents (including students) have great difficulty finding accommodation at a reasonable rent, renters are being turfed out of their homes so that landlords can profit from the lucrative Airbnb business and finally, local businesses that catered for residents rather than tourists are closing at an alarming rate, to be replaced by fast food/souvenir outlets. The Florentines are being forced to move out of the city.
There is strong evidence that far from simply facilitating the use of empty spare rooms, Airbnb actually enables landlords to bypass government regulation and in effect run illegal hostels. The original idea behind Airbnb was for ordinary families to rent out a room in their home, but what is happening in major tourist destinations is that landlords get rid of their long term tenants so that they can cash in on the very lucrative fast-turn-over tourist market. The accommodation site was supposed to be a pioneer of the sharing economy – an opportunity to distribute tourism revenue across cities – but a handful of landlords are now monopolising the Airbnb market.
There are people who do it just for business. They buy three or four apartments in the city and sit back and collect the euros. One so-called “super host” in Milan is reported to have taken around €500,000 in rent last year! Every city has a few super hosts that sometimes own hundreds of properties
A number of European cities can see the writing on the wall and are doing something about it...
Authorities in Berlin are attempting to crack down on Airbnb and its rivals with the threat of hefty fines for users who rent out entire properties rather than single rooms.
Amsterdam intends to limit rental periods to just 30 days a year starting in 2019.
In Paris, registration for short-term lettings is now mandatory.
Barcelona has suspended all new short-term rental permits.
After a 50% increase in unregulated tourist lets was accompanied by a 40% hike in residential rents, Palma de Mallorca last month voted to ban almost all listings by Airbnb and similar platforms such as HomeAway.
The very essence of a city changes when its residents move out and its traditional businesses close... is that what we come to Florence to see?
