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79% of Airbnb Listings In Barcelona Are Illegal
dkatana writes: Barcelona has more than 16,000 Airbnb listings and, according to reports on Cities of the Future, 79% could be illegal. "In April, Airbnb's European General Manager Jeroen Merchiers confirmed, during the Student Tourism Congress in Barcelona, that the platform has more than 85,000 listings in Spain alone." But most Airbnb hosts do not apply for a permit, fail to pay insurance and tourist tax, and ignore Catalonian law that forbids short-term rentals of rooms in private homes. "Residents," says the article, "had been complaining about the rising number of tourist apartments and the conduct of the mostly student-age renters. The majority from Italy, Germany and the UK were partying all night, some running around naked, and generally trashing their neighborhoods."
Words have meanings — some times, they even have consequences. The title says:
The write-up says:
The former is a statement of fact and a serious allegation. The latter is just as non-committal and devoid of information as the (in)famous promise of Geico's advertising.
Which is it?
Phew... Malum prohibitum crimes: it is only wrong because it is illegal. Screw you, Statists, get back to enforcing the malum in se — you know, the kind of thing, that is illegal because it is wrong.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Most (if not *all*) major cities in Western countries have laws regulating room/house rental. By going through Airbnb or similar services you just ignore those laws, allowing hosts not to pay any taxes, not to have any insurances, and so on. Where's the news in that? Why do they think so many people offer housing through it?
I'm not happy with the amount of bureaucracy that one has to go through just to rent out a room for a couple of weeks, but on the other hand unreported/untaxed income for the host or lack of insurance for the guest is just *wrong*. Like with Uber, countries should move towards a simplified and more effective jurisdiction (as owning an hotel and renting a room for a week are pretty much different things), and then they can force Airbnb to give out the names of the hosts and start enforcing such laws.
People can't just go running around naked, partying and trashing the neighborhood without paying the appropriate government fees.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes, they should just accept their neighborhoods being trashed by naked, drunken idiots. Where do they think they live, some prudish town in the U.S.?
#DeleteChrome
It's supposed to be intrinsic knowledge when speaking of companies that really don't produce anything and introduce a business model based upon others taking the risk while they reap a profit. Uber and Lyft are examples of these kinds of companies. They're viewed as perfect investment models and have insane valuations based on hype rather than substance. Welcome to the new economic reality.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
At least in the US, public nudity should be considered a violation of the Geneva Convention, the Smoot-Hawley Act, general concepts of decency and a Crime Against Nature.
There is a reason that cultures uniformly (pun intended, I suppose) develop social norms that include clothing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Screw you, Statists, get back to enforcing the malum in se — you know, the kind of thing, that is illegal because it is wrong.
For a modern state to function, you need both kinds of law. Failure to pay taxes is malum prohibitum (bad because it is prohibited), but without paying taxes you don't have cops.
I am an spaniard and I used to visit Barcelona regularly, is less than two hours by train from where I live.
I can say without a doubt that AirBNB and the other “home-sharing” sites like Homeaway or Niumba are turning Barcelona into shit. Like a virus that eats its own host.
Barcelona used to be a culturally vibrant city, but every day it resembles more and more a theme park. The city is simply not designed to accommodate this huge influx of tourism. Until 3-4 years ago, the city could more or less control the amount of tourism it received by limiting the number of hotel beds and private accommodations (“hostales” or “pensiones”). That way, the effects of tourism were limited to the massification of tourist attractions, and the effect was limited to the city center. And the negative effects of this floating population (strain on infrastructures, etc) was offset by a tax on each bed.
If you were a resident, you could carry on with your life with only minor inconveniences, like increased traffic jams due to the high number of tourist buses.
AirBNB has changed all that. By enabling an unlimited number of unregulated beds, spread everywhere, the number of tourists has boomed, and the quality of such tourism has plummeted. Long gone are the Japanese and european middle-aged families looking for a pleasant stay; all hail the drunken pissing, screaming, vomiting english and german kids and manchildren. It’s now a real problem.
You have to remember that, unlike in America, everyone in Barcelona (even the very rich) live in flats. You have one key to your building, and one key to your flat. Now, if one of your neighbours decides to illegally rent one of these flats, that means that the keys to your building are being handed to random foreigners, and nothing can stop these ‘guests’ from pissing in your stairs, vomiting in your doorstep, and so on. And when you have to carry on with your 8-5 day job and have to support a family, is very difficult to do so when you have teenage dickheads screaming and drinking all night, seven nights a week, right below/over you, and you wake up to the smell of vomit and urine every day. You can’t sleep, you underperform in your work and your family suffers.
Regulations exist for a reason. Tourism in a living city cannot self-regulate; this a Tragedy of the commons. AirBNB its hurting residents, its hurting legitimate and well-behaving tourists, and its replacing high-income tourism with the lowest of the low.
For some reason , american companies operating outside America like to ignore local laws. In Barcelona, AirBNB has made a business plan of ignoring Barcelona city regulations. AirBNB is not breaking any law directly, but by refusing to hand out renters and hosts data to the city, its enabling this widespread problem.
Residents are pissed for a reason. Recently they elected a new mayor that had vowed during the campaign to “crack down on the burden of tourism” That was three weeks ago so we'll see if that promise materializes or not.
Some real, concrete changes that I have noticed as a long-time visitor of Barcelona:
-Public parks like Parc Guell are no longer public, you have to pay to enter.
-Huge queues for everything.
-Overcrowding in all the main pedestrian streets, its not safe to walk anymore. Overcrowding in the beach also.
-Public space taken by shitty street performers and shitty “manteros” selling chinese shit to tourists.
-Pickpockets preying on drunk tourists everywhere.
-Street violence, drunk english kids looking to pick a fight, clashes between police and drunkards
-Prostitution in broad daylight in the city centre (!) As a mediterranean port city, prostitution has always been present, but not to these levels.
-Drug traffickers posing as illegal alcohol street vendors ("lateros")
-Old shops and commerces being replaced by shitty international chains