From what I heard from my brother, he lives in Barcelona, they are banning bnbs and short term rentals. In order to combat this problem.

They banned airbnb in victoria bc last year and rent here has actually went down. From this one single change.

Airbnb used to be great.. I could rent out a spare room and make a bit of cash. Then the developers, and the people who weren't responsible enough to be landlords had to make houses that were all AirBnb.

Why don't these places vet Airbnbs instead of straight banning it. Owner occupied dwellings should get a pass.

An important population we need to increase is ethical landlords.

And by ethical, I mean former.

Weird way of asking for 5 stars, but ok. ^/s^

Get rid of air bnb and similar. It's caused a ton of problems in Japan as well with people buying whole buildings and pricing out existing tenants. There are legal protections, but most tenants, particularly elderly, don't know about them and either pay new increased prices by the new landlord or move out. The government enacted laws requiring a minpaku (think lodging/hotel) license and putting maxes on time, but tons of people still run illegal ones.

A lot of those people seem to be Chinese investors running them off of other sites which has furthered anger and xenophobia against all foreigners. One of the parties that skyrocketed in the most recent election wants to strip property rights from all foreigners and not just investment properties but ALL properties. It's a reaction to getting priced out and the government not doing shit about it. Granted, there are tons of other problems (prices rising weekly or monthly, wages not keeping up at all with inflation and rising prices, and overtourism more generally), but this is low-hanging fruit.

As someone who just bought a house last year (on the market for over a year in the countryside with farmland for which I had to interview and get permits to buy and use), and volunteers in his community, this is terrifying to me. I had to go through tons of extra hoops just for being a foreigner to begin with and now, thanks to fuckhead illegal hotel owners and bad policy, now lots of people want to take the one little bit of stability I finally felt.

Funny how if you remove all landlords no one loses their home.

Spain is cracking down on this according to a local when I was there recently.

I know at least one city in France taking measures to severely limit Airbnb, because it's becoming a ghost town and people who actually work there can't find anywhere to live. The housing situation in the area is terrible.

Good for them. I already can't stand "professional" landlords that get into the business of shitting over places people need to live to maximise profit. Those who are taking over those spaces to turn them into fake hotels without the constraints are the lowest of that scum.

Not sure if anyone who lives here hasn't seen it yet, but !barcelona@piefed.social is a thing.

Copy pasted from another comment, the mayor who announced the decision made it so that it would applied after the end of his tenure (that will end in 2027, the decision is supposed to happen in 2028)

The other issue is that even besides tourism, Barcelona is a very attractive city for Spanish people due to the work opportunities, and there is definitely a lack of supply for the housing market. Getting back the Airbnb would help with the mass tourism (which is an issue of its own), but the housing crisis might still be there for a while.

I think it can be generally said that the US and their success stories are a force for the bad in the world.